On
Being
1.
Time
When
I was a child, I thought that death is so far in the future that life
is practically eternal. Now I know that even if I lived longer than
the Sun, and then everything ended, those ten billion years would
become a nothingness.
I
exist, and there is no such thing as nonexistence. My non-being is
unthinkable and thus impossible.
The
thought of my non-being is self-contradictory.
If the
thought of my non-being were meaningful, I would have to be able to
think of it. I can try to think of it because I exist, but just for
that reason the thought collapses into absurdity.
I may
think that it is logically quite possible that I do not exist.
However, this is a strange and erroneous thought, for existence and
logic presuppose each other: existence follows the laws of logic, but
if I did not exist, there would be no logic either.
Being
has no opposite. Non-being is not.
Existence
means 'being of anything', but non-being means 'non-being of
something somewhere'. We cannot speak of non-being in general in a
meaningful way.
The
proposition ”There is no such thing as non-being” is, of course,
a tautology. Nevertheless, it expresses a basic property of existence
that we seldom think of.
My
existence does not depend on time. I exist eternally.
Endlessness
is a logical property of my existence. The proposition ”I exist”
is always true.
Perhaps
I am no longer young. But what does it mean that I exist no more?
Someone
is perhaps no more with me in the world, because that someone is
dead. But I exist always.
Expressions
like ”If I did not exist...” and ”When I shall not exist any
more...” have no rational content.
Existence
means that I am experiencing something here and now. Existence is my
existence.
Only I
exist. Being of others and objects is the consequence of my
existence.
Others
and objects constitute the world. The world is, because I exist.
Everything
that is, is connected to my existence.
If I
did not exist, there would be nothing.
Existence
means that my present experience changes to a new experience.
There
is nothing between two successive experiences. There is only an
experience and then another experience.
Every
experience is followed by a new experience.
There
is no last experience.
If
there were the last experience, that is, an experience after which
there would be no experiences, there would be no experiences at all,
present, past or future, including this experience that I have now.
All
experiences are my experiences.
An
experience takes place here and now. Therefore only I can have it.
There
are no experiences foreign to me. This is a solid basis for ethics.
What I
do to another, I do to myself.
What I
do to another would make no difference if I were not the object of
that act.
Those
who have understood that the soul transmigrates, have also understood
that if they step on an ant, they disturb the stream of existence
along which they themselves flow.
The
experiences that I do not have at the moment, are in the past or in
the future.
The
past and the future are determined in relation to my present
experience.
Time is
the basic property of my existence which determines that my present
experience is followed by a new experience.
Time is
the nucleus of existence.
Existence
without time is a conceptual impossibility.
Time is
the necessary form of having experiences. I can exist only if the
content of my experience changes to another content.
All
experiences are in temporal relation to each other. They make a
series.
Experiences
are like a row of lights that one after the other and one at a time
go on and off. The light that is on, is my present experience.
As I am
writing this, lights go on and off. As you are reading this, other
lights go on and off.
Time
and eternity are not opposites. Time is eternal.
Time is
eternity built by successive presents.
Eternity
is endlessness of experiences. It realizes itself in time. Here.
Someone
has said that a moment is an intersection of time and eternity. But
this thought mystifies eternity. Time builds itself from present
moments that follow each other eternally.
Now is
always. And now is always something.
Our
fear that time will come to an end has no rational ground. Our hope
that time will change to timelessness is absurd. Our hope for
eternity has already come true.
An
experience can refer to earlier experiences. Memory is built up from
these references.
Memory
defines an individual.
An
individual is a series of experiences that memory connects to each
other.
Individuals
make a temporal series.
On one
hand I am an individual, on the other hand I am that which goes
through all individual forms.
As an
individual I am mortal, but as that which has experiences, as the
subject, I am immortal.
Forms
disappear, but that which changes form does not disappear.
As an
individual I am my memory, as the subject I am nothing.
All
that is disappears, hence also the individual that I am. Only the
nothing for which all being is, is eternal.
Because,
as the subject, I am nothing, I cannot disappear. Therefore I have to
exist eternally.
I am an
individual about whom I can say: ”When I shall not live any
more...” On the other hand, expressions like ”When I shall not
exist any more...” are meaningless.
The
subject is always the same: the one that exists here and now. That
is, I. But my name is all names.
I am,
as the subject, the subject of all contents of experience. That I am
the subject of all contents is a fundamental property of time. Time
connects experiences to each other in such a way that all experiences
are mine.
That I
am nothing as the subject means that even though I have an experience
each moment, and even though I have all experiences in the flow of
time, experiences have no such relations of reference to each other
that there would be some kind of property remaining through all
experiences, an eternal memory or identity. Only time connects all
experiences to each other: they all have a position in the common
time series.
The
proposition ”I exist” is true also when I am dead.
The
individual that I am dies. But someone is born. I.
Death
is forgetting.
When a
new experience does not contain a reference to my present experience,
I am dead.
Because
there is nothing between successive experiences, only memory makes a
difference between life and death.
An
experience dies immediately after it is born, but a new experience
can revive it by remembering it.
The
present dies into the past, revives in repeated memories, and then
disappears for good.
Now I
have this experience and then I have a new experience. If my new
experience contains something connected to my previous experience, my
life goes on. Else I am dead and just born.
The
present wanders through reality dragging and dropping fragments of
the past.
When I
die, a fragment of the past drops away.
The
past that is present as memories, vanishes from sight when I die.
When I
am dead, I am another individual.
When I
am dead, I do not remember the individual that I was.
When I
am dead, I am someone who is now for me an other, and for whom I am
an other.
When I
am dead, someone else has written these sentences.
Everybody
knows what it is like to be dead.
I have
left the one I was, and now that I am dead, I am this one, whom I
shall also leave soon.
When I
die, I leave myself.
Death
is a leap by which I move from one point of space-time to another
without speed.
The
stream is invisible and Charon is swift. Suddenly I am in these
strange surroundings and I do not remember where I came here from.
Life is
a journey from oblivion to oblivion. Existence means being always on
some life-long journey.
Life
and death are not phenomena. Life is the flow of phenomena for an
individual, and death is the memory break that separates one
individual from another.
Phenomena
occur to me, and when I am dead, they occur to the other that I am.
Death
is nothing. There is only the last experience of an individual and
the first experience of another individual.
The end
is a beginning.
2.
The World
God
wondered if He should create the world or not. He decided not to do
it. But now Man got furious: ”What kind of a Creator are you, not
doing what you are supposed to do! Create me at least!” So God had
to create Man and the world for him to live in.
Some
people think that first there was nature without consciousness, and
then at some point consciousness appeared as a property of nature.
However, this is a misleading picture of the relation between nature
and consciousness, because it suggests that consciousness could also
not have appeared, and that we can imagine nature without
consciousness. But because I exist and cannot ”non-exist”,
consciousness exists necessarily and needs nature and its evolution
to realize my existence.
Consciousness
cannot be explained by objects of consciousness.
I am in
the world as a body. I see my body. If I could see my functioning
brain, I would see what happens in my brain when I look at its
functioning. I would see my seeing process as it appears to me in the
world. But what I would see would not explain my seeing it.
Consciousness
does not reside in any place or structure of the material world, not
even in the brain.
My body
is a material object that I meet in the world. My head is part of my
body. My brain is an organ inside my head, and its physiology is
connected to the way I experience the world.
There
are no thoughts in my head. My brain does not think.
Because
all being is related to consciousness, consciousness cannot be a
property of matter or any other being.
We live
in a material world, we explore it, and at some point we may think
that it is all there is, and that by exploring the structure of
matter we shall in the end also explain why we exist. However, the
world is part of the structure of existence, and our existence
explains the being of the world, not vice versa.
When I
want to understand my existence. I start to explore what is already
in front of me: the world I am living in. But I cannot understand
existence or the world if I do not see the totality: my temporal
being in the world that is the material condition of my existence.
Even if
all the objects of our experience were material, matter itself would
not be essential, but experiencing the material reality.
The
structure of my existence is such that the objects I meet in the
world are the natural objects of my sight. If I want to see the
structure itself, I must look closer. But I do not see myself, and my
existence is not an object that I can look at.
Existence
must realize itself, and it can realize itself only in the form of
its inner logic. Nature is one of the necessary forms of realizing
existence. Nature in turn has its own inner logic, the expression of
which are the necessary structures that we call laws of nature.
Laws of
nature do not explain anything. Scientists find laws of nature and
find that nature behaves according to these laws.
Even if
we found all laws of nature, and everything happened according to
these laws, it would still be a total mystery that things happen in
the way they happen.
Science
cannot explain why reality is such as it is. It only illuminates the
landscape so that we can see the inner structure of phenomena, their
connections to laws of nature.
When we
see the structure of a phenomenon, we understand and master it
better, and it does not bother us as much as before. We call this
sometimes explaining, but it is not, of course, an explanation of the
being of the phenomenon.
The
explanation of a phenomenon is not in its structure or in other
phenomena, but in our existence, in the realization of which it takes
part.
The
explanation of the phenomenon that the Sun rises every morning could
be a figure of the solar system and the description of all laws of
nature. When we see the totality to which a phenomenon belongs, we
feel that we have explained it and that it now belongs to the
phenomena that we understand. But if we want to know why the solar
system exists, we must describe a larger totality and, in the end,
the whole universe. And the explanation of the being of the universe
is not in the universe but in us who try to explain the world and
understand our existence.
The
universe is a material organism that realizes all forms of
consciousness as an endless flow of time. My body is an organic part
of the universe, and it realizes the form of consciousness which
expresses itself at present.
The
universe realizes my eternal existence. That is why the Sun rises.
The
world is one of the basic structures of my existence. It exists
because I exist.
It is
an absurd idea that there would be a world, but I would not exist.
The
world is more than I can perceive or understand, but it is
nevertheless only for me.
There
are events that are outside of all experience. But although they are
outside of experience, they presuppose an experience outside of which
they are.
Although
probably nobody was in place to witness the birth of the Sun, it was
still born in a way that can be described in principle. But this does
not mean that the world does not presuppose consciousness, because
even if the Sun was born outside of consciousness, it was born to the
world in which I exist, and it is not meaningful to say that it could
have been born even if I did not exist.
An
object can be even if it does not appear to me, but not independent
of my existence.
I could
think that if a hundred years ago something else had happened than
what really happened, I would not be born and consequently I would
not exist now. But even if I could imagine a world that is different
from the one we live in, I cannot imagine a world in which I would
not be some individual at present.
I could
think that I exist only because there happened to evolve life on
Earth. But it is, of course, vice versa: there ”happened” to
evolve life on Earth because I exist.
I do
not exist because my heart beats, but my heart beats because I exist.
If
Earth would blow up tomorrow, this incident would define some details
of my existence but would not destroy my existence and its
endlessness.
The
subject is not a being that can be or not be. It is the condition of
the being of all objects and phenomena. All that there is, is in
relation to me.
If I
did not exist, there would be nothing. Perhaps no one has yet
understood this simple sentence and all its consequences.
3.
The Others
Children
are playing. One of them gets an idea. ”What if I were you?”
”Perhaps you are”, the other says.
Others
are series of experiences, individuals.
Other
individuals are related to the individual that I am at present. If I
did not exist, there would be no others either.
The
other is the other member of a relation which has me as one member.
And because the relation is symmetrical, I am also the other. So I am
an other to myself.
I am in
temporal and spatial relation to others.
The
others are in the world, but also in my past or future.
Consciousness
is my consciousness. It is a flow of experiences, changing of the
present to a new present. Also the experiences of others belong to
this flow, but because they are not my present experiences, they must
be experiences that I have had in the past or experiences that I
shall have in the future.
I have
this feeling and I know that also others have feelings. A feeling is
however something that is present in the double meaning of the word
as 'here' and 'now', the content of my existence as I am experiencing
it. It is not meaningful to speak of a feeling that I am not feeling.
But because the feelings that I meet in the world in others are not
in the same way present as my present feeling is, they can only be
feelings that I have had or shall have in those ”places” in time
where others are.
If I
did not experience the experiences of the others, there would be
experiences without experiencing.
It is
impossible to think of an experience which exists but which I do not
experience.
An
experience that I do not experience is a being that is not.
I am an
individual that is composed of the experiences between my birth an
death, that is, the experiences to which my present experience has a
memory relation or which have a memory relation to my present
experience. Other individuals are composed of experiences before my
birth or after my death, that is, experiences to which my experiences
have no memory relation and which have no memory relation to my
experiences.
Existence
realizes itself by fragments of time that are temporally and
spatially related to each other.
That I
am here and now, is a timeless truth. The present is a unique content
mediated by the world, which, as it changes to another unique
content, constitutes, mediated by memory, the unique series of
presences that we call the individual. Individuals are series of
experiences that, separated from each other by the loss of memory we
call death, change to each other constituting on one hand the endless
series of presences we call time, and on the other hand, as they meet
each other and themselves as material objects in space, that totality
of events that we call the universe.
I meet
myself in the others. This is not a metaphor.
When I
meet an other, I meet a moment in the endless series of moments, at
the present moment of which I meet the other, and at a past or future
moment of which I have been or shall be the one who meets me at the
same meeting event.
A and B
see each other simultaneously in their common time in their common
world. But in the time that connects these two experiences to each
other as present experiences, one happens before the other.
The
other whom I meet am I who meets an other: me.
I know
that others have experiences and I know that the other is an I, but
something prevents me from seeing what our grammar expresses: the I
whom I meet am I.
In
these sentences 'I' does not refer to an individual but to the
subject. This way of using the word intends to express the view that
there is only one subject, and that the subject is always that which
I am here and now.
When I
speak to an other, 'I' refers to the individual that I am, and 'you'
refers to another individual. That there is only one subject, has no
expression in ordinary language.
That
only I exist, does not mean that the others do not exist. 'I' and
'the other' refer to the same point, but this identity realizes
itself only through death. In life it does not express itself. When I
live with others, the others are only others.
The
word 'I' has two meanings: 'the subject which has these experiences'
and 'the individual that has these experiences'. When I speak, these
meanings overlap so that I speak simultaneously as an individual and
as a timeless subject. When someone else speaks, I think this someone
is an individual that is foreign to me and whose inner world is
closed from me, and I do not see that 'I' really refers to one point
only: the present that changes its content and meets its past or
future in the world, and to the past or future of which 'I' can
therefore also refer.
When I
use language I presuppose that there are in the world other
individuals who understand me. However, language does not easily
express the deeper meaning of the existence of others: my temporal
relation to them.
If we
try, using language, to get closer to the deepest meaning of our
existence, language comes to its frontiers illuminating reality with
its paradoxes.
Only by
traveling outside of language can we see into the nucleus of
existence.
When I
speak, I speak to others, and therefore I speak of things that are
common to us in the world, and of myself as an individual, in
relation to others. This is the region of language. But only a slight
move, a change of perspective, opens up a new land, where things that
are common to us become private, a land which therefore stays outside
of language. Seeing this land reveals the deep union that has always
been between us, and when walking on this land we understand, for the
first time, the meaning of our existence.
We have
asked who the others are. We have also asked what will be after death
and what was before birth. The answer to both questions is the same:
after my death I shall be an other and before my birth I was an
other.
The
thought that the other whom I meet am I, is, when thoroughly
understood, clear but embarrassing.
The
existence of others is self-evident for us, because it belongs to the
basic structures of our existence. We do not usually think what a
strange phenomenon it is.
When we
communicate with others, we do not understand who they are. But we
shall perhaps understand it some day in the silence of a forest, when
our thoughts decide to start conquering their frontiers.
Someone
got an insight once that Earth is a sphere, and now we all understand
it, although our senses tell us something else. In the same way the
mysteries of death and otherness will be solved: everything just
settles down and reality reveals to us its ”geometrical” form,
its symmetry.
********
If I
did not exist, there would be nothing. But this is a paradoxical
statement and has deep consequences. For it is clear that when I die,
the world does not end. That is, when I die as an individual. But I
think we use the word ‘I’ in two ways: (1) the person who has
these experiences, and (2) the subject that has these experiences.
And the subject does not die but moves from individual to individual.
So there is only one subject that is eternal and guarantees that
there is always something, because the subject, my existence, has to
be in the world in order to be at all.
The
question “Why is there something instead of nothing” is often
regarded as a pseudo question, especially by materialistically
oriented scientists. In a way they are right, because ‘non-being’
is really a self-contradictory concept, but the reason for its
absurdity is perhaps not what they think.
The clue is the subject, the ‘I’, for whom everything is. Being without a standpoint would be absurd. Although there are many things in the world which no one has seen or even thought of, they are there ontologically in relation to a subject, the one that has experiences here and now, the one that is present in the double sense of ‘here’ and ‘now’.
I am, and my non-being is unthinkable and therefore impossible. So I am eternally, because time belongs to my being in a fundamental way. Time is the nucleus of being, originally of my being and secondarily of the being of the world or universe, where it loses its original structure of present, past and future and shows itself as the space-time of physics. Originally time is constant changing of the present mode of being of ‘is’ for the past mode of being of ‘was’ and the creation of a new present in the flow of experiences heading towards the future.
Are there any grounds for the argument that my non-being is impossible? It is a strong statement, and looks like a religious thesis. I can only say that for me it is a clear and powerful idea, an insight rather than the result of logical reasoning. But it is consistent, too.
So my existence is causa sui, and the way I exist, or must exist, and in what kind of a universe I can exist, and what in general is the basic structure of existence, demands thinking that goes beyond this reasoning. My guess is that the special way we exist is somehow connected to seeking transparency of being or, as Hegel put it, self-consciousness of the Absolute. But, someone may ask, how is the existence of other subjects related to all this? Philosophy is full of exciting questions.
The clue is the subject, the ‘I’, for whom everything is. Being without a standpoint would be absurd. Although there are many things in the world which no one has seen or even thought of, they are there ontologically in relation to a subject, the one that has experiences here and now, the one that is present in the double sense of ‘here’ and ‘now’.
I am, and my non-being is unthinkable and therefore impossible. So I am eternally, because time belongs to my being in a fundamental way. Time is the nucleus of being, originally of my being and secondarily of the being of the world or universe, where it loses its original structure of present, past and future and shows itself as the space-time of physics. Originally time is constant changing of the present mode of being of ‘is’ for the past mode of being of ‘was’ and the creation of a new present in the flow of experiences heading towards the future.
Are there any grounds for the argument that my non-being is impossible? It is a strong statement, and looks like a religious thesis. I can only say that for me it is a clear and powerful idea, an insight rather than the result of logical reasoning. But it is consistent, too.
So my existence is causa sui, and the way I exist, or must exist, and in what kind of a universe I can exist, and what in general is the basic structure of existence, demands thinking that goes beyond this reasoning. My guess is that the special way we exist is somehow connected to seeking transparency of being or, as Hegel put it, self-consciousness of the Absolute. But, someone may ask, how is the existence of other subjects related to all this? Philosophy is full of exciting questions.
Why do
I ask about my being? Perhaps it is because I see others die, and I
understand that I shall also die. And when I am dead, I am not, and I
have never been, because the past is also a mode of being. This
insight of my future non-being brings up the concepts of being and
non-being and the question “Why is there being?” If I did not
know that I shall die, I would not have the concepts of being and
non-being in the general sense. So for a self-conscious being the
question of being and non-being is not meaningless. On the contrary,
an intolerable paradox of existence strikes existence itself, and I
have tried to sketch some general ideas for resolving that
paradox.
Someone may think that there is no paradox: now I am and then I am not. But although being is temporal, being and non-being do not “happen” in time. Therefore there is a real contradiction between those two ”concepts”. One of them must go. And it is not difficult to guess which one.
From the logical point of view the sentence “There is being” is a tautology, and the sentence “There is non-being” is a contradiction. Our grammar tells us the same: being is, and non-being is not. Our grammar is wiser than philosophers.
But then again, it is not easy for us to understand the deep existential consequences of this simple grammar.
Someone may think that there is no paradox: now I am and then I am not. But although being is temporal, being and non-being do not “happen” in time. Therefore there is a real contradiction between those two ”concepts”. One of them must go. And it is not difficult to guess which one.
From the logical point of view the sentence “There is being” is a tautology, and the sentence “There is non-being” is a contradiction. Our grammar tells us the same: being is, and non-being is not. Our grammar is wiser than philosophers.
But then again, it is not easy for us to understand the deep existential consequences of this simple grammar.
My view
is that science has trouble with consciousness because it is
committed to a false monistic ontology. It assumes that there is one
isolated universe where all phenomena are on the same level of being.
Furthermore, it assumes that complex phenomena can be explained by
the simple, basic components of physics. And what is the key point in
this context, it assumes that the phenomena of consciousness can in
principle be explained by biological and finally physical
principles.
But the universe is not an isolated phenomenon. It is one member of the relation whose other member is the subject, the 'I' that is ”in the universe”. So I have a relation to the universe, and that relation we call consciousness. We cannot break that relation so that the relation itself would come part of the universe. This means that there is a primordial gap between the world of physics and consciousness. Those two phenomena are not on the same ontological level. However, there is a correlation between the two, and it is this correlation that should be the object of scientific inquiry, not ”explaining” consciousness by biology, which is impossible and will stay as such.
But the universe is not an isolated phenomenon. It is one member of the relation whose other member is the subject, the 'I' that is ”in the universe”. So I have a relation to the universe, and that relation we call consciousness. We cannot break that relation so that the relation itself would come part of the universe. This means that there is a primordial gap between the world of physics and consciousness. Those two phenomena are not on the same ontological level. However, there is a correlation between the two, and it is this correlation that should be the object of scientific inquiry, not ”explaining” consciousness by biology, which is impossible and will stay as such.
All
being is my being or belongs to the necessary conditions of my
being.
I am, and there is no such phenomenon as non-being. Non-being is a pseudo concept. It is self-contradictory, unthinkable, and does not refer to anything.
One of the necessary conditions of my being is that I am related to a set of objects we call the world or universe. This being related we call consciousness in the broad sense , including all experiences of any subject.
Consciousness is essentially temporal and is the source of time in all its manifestations, including the space-time of physics.
Consciousness is not the same as subjectivity. It is the manifold of various subjective forms by which we are related to the world, whereas subjectivity can be thought of as the point without content along which the world is coordinated, to use Wittgenstein's expression.
The subject, or subjectivity, or the 'I', is eternal, because being, as my being, is temporal and has no opposite.
So, as the subject I am eternal. I may have had a beginning, and in fact this must be the case, but I shall never have my last experience, as the subject. But as an individual, of course, I was born and I shall die. So the word 'I' has two meanings: (1) ”the subject that has these experiences” and (2) ”the individual that has these experiences”.
My being consists of successive experiences that are directed towards the world and towards my past experiences building a synthesis of both. This way we learn and grow as individuals. But if I do not have a relation to my past experiences, I am dead and just born. So death is not the end. Dying is forgetting.
So memory defines an individual.
The world consists of objects and other individuals. Other individuals are the deepest meaning of the world and are manifestations of the one and only subject whose one manifestation I am. The objects of the world, and I as an individual body, are material because the other individuals must be material and spatio-temporal objects in order to have a concrete relation to me.
Now we see that the world, as the world of others, divides reality into two ontological levels: the material world and consciousness. I see the others as material bodies but also individual conscious subjects, although their experiences are foreign to me. I can also look at my brain as I think and see my thinking process ”online”, like in a mirror, on the material level.
Now we can speculate a bit, and suggest that perhaps reality is, in order to be causa sui and transparent to itself, a reflexive relation of me to myself, because ”I am” is the only truth that needs no explanation. So, because every other object of the world that I am related to, needs an explanation and remains a mystery even after all explanations, the deepest meaning of the world must be myself, because I am causa sui. This is what I mean when I say that there is only one subject and use the phrase 'the subject'. I am the subject now. You are the subject in my future or in my past. I admit that this is embarrassing, but all the same, this seems to be the only hypothesis that solves the problem of foreign experiences, saying that they are not really foreign but my own experiences, which is in accordance with the concept and idea of experience.
This means that I, as the subject, have wandered and will wander through all individual forms of consciousness, in an unknown order, and this wandering has no end. All experiences are my experiences. So this all leads to a kind of solipsism and a kind of transmigration theory, both considered as mortal sins among philosophers, but I think my view is a sophisticated combination of both, reconciling the sins.
I am, and there is no such phenomenon as non-being. Non-being is a pseudo concept. It is self-contradictory, unthinkable, and does not refer to anything.
One of the necessary conditions of my being is that I am related to a set of objects we call the world or universe. This being related we call consciousness in the broad sense , including all experiences of any subject.
Consciousness is essentially temporal and is the source of time in all its manifestations, including the space-time of physics.
Consciousness is not the same as subjectivity. It is the manifold of various subjective forms by which we are related to the world, whereas subjectivity can be thought of as the point without content along which the world is coordinated, to use Wittgenstein's expression.
The subject, or subjectivity, or the 'I', is eternal, because being, as my being, is temporal and has no opposite.
So, as the subject I am eternal. I may have had a beginning, and in fact this must be the case, but I shall never have my last experience, as the subject. But as an individual, of course, I was born and I shall die. So the word 'I' has two meanings: (1) ”the subject that has these experiences” and (2) ”the individual that has these experiences”.
My being consists of successive experiences that are directed towards the world and towards my past experiences building a synthesis of both. This way we learn and grow as individuals. But if I do not have a relation to my past experiences, I am dead and just born. So death is not the end. Dying is forgetting.
So memory defines an individual.
The world consists of objects and other individuals. Other individuals are the deepest meaning of the world and are manifestations of the one and only subject whose one manifestation I am. The objects of the world, and I as an individual body, are material because the other individuals must be material and spatio-temporal objects in order to have a concrete relation to me.
Now we see that the world, as the world of others, divides reality into two ontological levels: the material world and consciousness. I see the others as material bodies but also individual conscious subjects, although their experiences are foreign to me. I can also look at my brain as I think and see my thinking process ”online”, like in a mirror, on the material level.
Now we can speculate a bit, and suggest that perhaps reality is, in order to be causa sui and transparent to itself, a reflexive relation of me to myself, because ”I am” is the only truth that needs no explanation. So, because every other object of the world that I am related to, needs an explanation and remains a mystery even after all explanations, the deepest meaning of the world must be myself, because I am causa sui. This is what I mean when I say that there is only one subject and use the phrase 'the subject'. I am the subject now. You are the subject in my future or in my past. I admit that this is embarrassing, but all the same, this seems to be the only hypothesis that solves the problem of foreign experiences, saying that they are not really foreign but my own experiences, which is in accordance with the concept and idea of experience.
This means that I, as the subject, have wandered and will wander through all individual forms of consciousness, in an unknown order, and this wandering has no end. All experiences are my experiences. So this all leads to a kind of solipsism and a kind of transmigration theory, both considered as mortal sins among philosophers, but I think my view is a sophisticated combination of both, reconciling the sins.
I see people die, and I understand that I shall also
die. Nevertheless, I find it impossible to think of my non-being,
because if I did not exist, there would be nothing: no world, no
time, no past, including the fact that I am just now writing these
sentences.
Besides, we do not experience our death, we only experience something before death and perhaps something after death.
Besides, we do not experience our death, we only experience something before death and perhaps something after death.
The life of an individual cannot be eternal, whereas my
existence as the experiencing subject has no end. The difference
between these two levels of subjectivity is essential, leading to a
modified concept of transmigration and a new way of understanding
time.
Although the universe is full of events that no
consciousness is witnessing, all these events are for a
consciousness, namely for the consciousness that is just now
experiencing just these experiences at precisely this place in the
world, although those events do not belong to its sphere of
experience. So also the part of reality which is unreachable for
consciousness, presupposes a consciousness for which it is
unreachable.
As I see it, the relation of consciousness to the material world is also ontological. The world, or universe, consists of objects and is itself an objective totality. However, objects are not Kantian 'Dinge an sich' but members of the subject-object relation. The being of the world depends on the being of the subject and vice versa. There is no world without the subject and no conscious, experiencing subject without the world.
Now we can ask, which one is more fundamental, consciousness or the material world, which one is the “primus motor”. It is my strong view that it is the subject, the “I am”, the one which defines the meaning of being in general.
I am not saying that consciousness has no material basis, but I am asking what is the ontological relation of consciousness to its basis.
These thoughts may lead to some metaphysical speculations.
As I see it, the relation of consciousness to the material world is also ontological. The world, or universe, consists of objects and is itself an objective totality. However, objects are not Kantian 'Dinge an sich' but members of the subject-object relation. The being of the world depends on the being of the subject and vice versa. There is no world without the subject and no conscious, experiencing subject without the world.
Now we can ask, which one is more fundamental, consciousness or the material world, which one is the “primus motor”. It is my strong view that it is the subject, the “I am”, the one which defines the meaning of being in general.
I am not saying that consciousness has no material basis, but I am asking what is the ontological relation of consciousness to its basis.
These thoughts may lead to some metaphysical speculations.
My being is being in the world.
My being is being related to the world, and there are two participants in this relation: on one hand I, the subject, and on the other hand the world, or transcendence.
My relation to the world is called consciousness or immanence.
Because I am related to the world, I have to be in the world, and so I have to belong to transcendence, too. Therefore I must have a body by which I am related to the world.
So my being realizes itself in my relation to the world, and because this relation is corporeal, every state of immanence or consciousness has, as its counterpart, a unique totality of events in my body. However, immanence and transcendence must always be kept conceptually separated from each other, and no kind of reduction is possible.
My body is a kind of mirror image of my consciousness: when I move my hand (an experience), my hand moves (an event in the world), or when I think of something, something happens in my brain. The same event shows itself on the immanent level and on the transcendent level, in consciousness and in the material world.
Some cognition scientists think that the phenomena of consciousness can be reduced to brain events in the same way as brain events can be reduced to the basic components of physics. They ask how the brain produces consciousness. This question has proved to be a difficult one, and the reason for that is very clear: the brain does not produce consciousness, so there is no problem. The task of science is only to describe the observed correlations.
Matter, the material world and the universe, as objective phenomena, are just for their objective nature participants of the subject-object relation. We cannot get rid of the subject. It is there in all research concerning the totality of being, either explicitly or implicitly, not only as a reflection of matter, not only as an emergent property of matter, but as the starting point. Science has admittedly made amazing progress by ”bracketing out” consciousness, but at the same time the ontological status of consciousness has been left unclear, which shows itself for example just in this obsession to reduce consciousness to brain events.
The problem for science or philosophy is not how the brain creates thoughts, because the question is not meaningful. The task for science is to describe and clarify the correlations between thoughts and brain events. The philosophical problem is to understand why the brain is needed for thinking, that is, what is the role of the material world in the being of the subject. For we are living in the same and only world that shows itself as an object for us, and it is just this reflexive relation that causes the split into mind and matter, thoughts and brain events. What this common world of ours is in its deepest meaning and why it divides us in this way, will perhaps not become clear to us before we understand in a profound way the existence of other subjects and the meaning of intersubjectivity.
I am not saying that consciousness has no material basis, but I am asking what is the ontological relation of consciousness to its basis.
I am a subject and I meet myself as an object in the world. From this meeting there appears an irreducible dualism between my consciousness and my body. My thinking reflects itself as brain events in the same way as my movements repeat themselves in the mirror image. In this case, however, the mirror with its reflections is already there in the movement as its inner structure.
We could perhaps say a bit poetically that the universe has not created consciousness but consciousness has created the universe for itself to live in. However, this does not mean that there is a causal relation between the two, but it means that consciousness is ontologically more fundamental than the material world, which together with temporality constitutes the basic structure of being. When we speak about this structure, for example about the changing world, we already presuppose a relation to the one who is speaking, the subject, and it is not meaningful to speak about the world or about time without this relation, although it is not always expressed. If I did not exist, there would be nothing. Therefore the subject is eternal.
We can conclude from what was said above that also time is a concept that belongs to the sphere of subjectivity. It is the core structure of consciousness and being in general, a phenomenon where the present is constantly changing to the past and a new present is created in the flow of experiences heading towards the future. Instead of this, as a component of the space-time of physics time is seen from a kind of eternal perspective, so that the present, the past and the future are eliminated or ”bracketed off”. This is a valid construction and as part of the theory it does what is needed. The physicist however misunderstands the place of consciousness in the totality of being if he/she sees the experiences of presence and flow of time as some kind of illusions or experiences created by our own restrictions, and tries to explain them by the time concept of physics and the functioning of our brain. This pseudo problem has sometimes been in some physicists' minds in their popular writings. It is clear, however, that the basic structures of consciousness cannot be explained by the objects of consciousness, however objective and ”Dinge an sich” they may be.
Here the word 'subject' does not mean an individual, empirical ”I” but, as was said above, the uneliminable precondition of all being, the fact that everything is in relation to me, or that the world is my world, to use Ludwig Wittgenstein's phrase.
Although the universe is full of events that no consciousness is witnessing, all these events are for a consciousness, namely for the consciousness that is just now experiencing just these experiences at precisely this spot in the world, although those events do not belong to its sphere of experience. So also the part of reality which is unreachable for consciousness, presupposes a consciousness for which it is unreachable.
The task of philosophy is ambitious: it wants to understand everything. To start this, it has to abandon all ontologies that disturb clear thinking, from materialism to spiritualism, and start from what is self-evident and certain and whose opposite cannot be thought of: I am. The word 'I' has, as was said before, two meanings: on one hand it refers to an individual, on the other hand to the subject which goes through the experiences of all individuals. It is in this latter sense that the sentence ”I am” is always true and therefore the natural starting point of philosophy, for my being is the necessary condition of all being and consequently the place where we must start searching the meaning of all being.
The most beautiful grapes of the Copernican revolution are perhaps still ripening.
My being is being related to the world, and there are two participants in this relation: on one hand I, the subject, and on the other hand the world, or transcendence.
My relation to the world is called consciousness or immanence.
Because I am related to the world, I have to be in the world, and so I have to belong to transcendence, too. Therefore I must have a body by which I am related to the world.
So my being realizes itself in my relation to the world, and because this relation is corporeal, every state of immanence or consciousness has, as its counterpart, a unique totality of events in my body. However, immanence and transcendence must always be kept conceptually separated from each other, and no kind of reduction is possible.
My body is a kind of mirror image of my consciousness: when I move my hand (an experience), my hand moves (an event in the world), or when I think of something, something happens in my brain. The same event shows itself on the immanent level and on the transcendent level, in consciousness and in the material world.
Some cognition scientists think that the phenomena of consciousness can be reduced to brain events in the same way as brain events can be reduced to the basic components of physics. They ask how the brain produces consciousness. This question has proved to be a difficult one, and the reason for that is very clear: the brain does not produce consciousness, so there is no problem. The task of science is only to describe the observed correlations.
Matter, the material world and the universe, as objective phenomena, are just for their objective nature participants of the subject-object relation. We cannot get rid of the subject. It is there in all research concerning the totality of being, either explicitly or implicitly, not only as a reflection of matter, not only as an emergent property of matter, but as the starting point. Science has admittedly made amazing progress by ”bracketing out” consciousness, but at the same time the ontological status of consciousness has been left unclear, which shows itself for example just in this obsession to reduce consciousness to brain events.
The problem for science or philosophy is not how the brain creates thoughts, because the question is not meaningful. The task for science is to describe and clarify the correlations between thoughts and brain events. The philosophical problem is to understand why the brain is needed for thinking, that is, what is the role of the material world in the being of the subject. For we are living in the same and only world that shows itself as an object for us, and it is just this reflexive relation that causes the split into mind and matter, thoughts and brain events. What this common world of ours is in its deepest meaning and why it divides us in this way, will perhaps not become clear to us before we understand in a profound way the existence of other subjects and the meaning of intersubjectivity.
I am not saying that consciousness has no material basis, but I am asking what is the ontological relation of consciousness to its basis.
I am a subject and I meet myself as an object in the world. From this meeting there appears an irreducible dualism between my consciousness and my body. My thinking reflects itself as brain events in the same way as my movements repeat themselves in the mirror image. In this case, however, the mirror with its reflections is already there in the movement as its inner structure.
We could perhaps say a bit poetically that the universe has not created consciousness but consciousness has created the universe for itself to live in. However, this does not mean that there is a causal relation between the two, but it means that consciousness is ontologically more fundamental than the material world, which together with temporality constitutes the basic structure of being. When we speak about this structure, for example about the changing world, we already presuppose a relation to the one who is speaking, the subject, and it is not meaningful to speak about the world or about time without this relation, although it is not always expressed. If I did not exist, there would be nothing. Therefore the subject is eternal.
We can conclude from what was said above that also time is a concept that belongs to the sphere of subjectivity. It is the core structure of consciousness and being in general, a phenomenon where the present is constantly changing to the past and a new present is created in the flow of experiences heading towards the future. Instead of this, as a component of the space-time of physics time is seen from a kind of eternal perspective, so that the present, the past and the future are eliminated or ”bracketed off”. This is a valid construction and as part of the theory it does what is needed. The physicist however misunderstands the place of consciousness in the totality of being if he/she sees the experiences of presence and flow of time as some kind of illusions or experiences created by our own restrictions, and tries to explain them by the time concept of physics and the functioning of our brain. This pseudo problem has sometimes been in some physicists' minds in their popular writings. It is clear, however, that the basic structures of consciousness cannot be explained by the objects of consciousness, however objective and ”Dinge an sich” they may be.
Here the word 'subject' does not mean an individual, empirical ”I” but, as was said above, the uneliminable precondition of all being, the fact that everything is in relation to me, or that the world is my world, to use Ludwig Wittgenstein's phrase.
Although the universe is full of events that no consciousness is witnessing, all these events are for a consciousness, namely for the consciousness that is just now experiencing just these experiences at precisely this spot in the world, although those events do not belong to its sphere of experience. So also the part of reality which is unreachable for consciousness, presupposes a consciousness for which it is unreachable.
The task of philosophy is ambitious: it wants to understand everything. To start this, it has to abandon all ontologies that disturb clear thinking, from materialism to spiritualism, and start from what is self-evident and certain and whose opposite cannot be thought of: I am. The word 'I' has, as was said before, two meanings: on one hand it refers to an individual, on the other hand to the subject which goes through the experiences of all individuals. It is in this latter sense that the sentence ”I am” is always true and therefore the natural starting point of philosophy, for my being is the necessary condition of all being and consequently the place where we must start searching the meaning of all being.
The most beautiful grapes of the Copernican revolution are perhaps still ripening.
When I meet someone, I meet a subject who has
experiences, but I have no access to those experiences in the way
they are experienced by the other. The experiences of the other are
present for the other but absent for me, because as an individual I
cannot have the experiences of another individual. I can only meet
something which is not only the physiological, material organism we
call 'body' but also the series of inner experiences we call 'mind'
but which is foreign to me in the other. So the other has its own
immanence, its mind, which no one else can see, and its
transcendence, its body, which is accessible to all of us. But the
mind is not “in” the body, and the body does not “have” a
mind, and what is also important, the organism, for example the
brain, does not produce thoughts or anything else that belongs to the
sphere of the mind. In fact the body and the mind are one and the
same thing considered from two ontological levels: from immanent and
transcendent points of view. But although these two levels are
manifestations of the same phenomenon, there is no bridge between
them: we cannot explain one by the other because the basic concepts
are incompatible. There are only correlations between them, and
therefore the mind-body problem is not, for example, a problem of how
we could reduce the phenomena of consciousness to brain events, but
rather a problem of how we could translate mental and bodily events
into each other.
This relation between body and mind becomes still more clear if I imagine observing my brain events at the same time as I am thinking of something: I can see my thinking process in real time in my brain and see the correlations like a moving picture of myself in a mirror, although the correlations are much more complex than in the case of a mirror image.
The question remains: why are we divided into minds and bodies? The answer lies in the existence of others. The others must be material in order to be in relation to me, and experiencing subjects in order to be on the same level of being as I am. That is the very idea of the other.
This relation between body and mind becomes still more clear if I imagine observing my brain events at the same time as I am thinking of something: I can see my thinking process in real time in my brain and see the correlations like a moving picture of myself in a mirror, although the correlations are much more complex than in the case of a mirror image.
The question remains: why are we divided into minds and bodies? The answer lies in the existence of others. The others must be material in order to be in relation to me, and experiencing subjects in order to be on the same level of being as I am. That is the very idea of the other.
There is something because I am. This was the basic
insight of Descartes, and it also “explains” why there is
necessarily something rather than nothing if we do not interpret the
'I' as an empirical, individual subject but the transcendental
subject which is timeless. This is how I see the problem, which is,
in my view, a proper philosophical problem, not a pseudo question at
all, although many scientists see it that way.
I am conscious, by definition. The others are conscious,
by definition, just because they are others. I have a relation to the
others, and this relation realizes itself by the material world,
including instruments like hammers and computers which, by
definition, are not conscious.
Existence = my existence, the word 'I' denoting not the
individual, empirical subject, e.g. 'Markku Tamminen', but the
transcendental subject which is the precondition of all being.
That I am, in this sense, needs no explaining.
Therefore, existence needs no explaining.
That I am, in this sense, needs no explaining.
Therefore, existence needs no explaining.
I think the reason why it is so difficult to explain or
define consciousness is that we see it as a phenomenon among other
phenomena. But phenomena present themselves to the subject (i.e. to
me, to us) and consciousness is the way phenomena present themselves
to us. Therefore consciousness is ontologically closer to us than
other phenomena, and there is no conceptual bridge between
consciousness and the material world, which means that consciousness
cannot be explained or defined by scientific concepts. There are only
correlations between those two levels of being.
I would say that the problem of consciousness is not
difficult, if it is a problem at all. Even Descartes had a hunch of
this, although he interpreted consciousness as substance, which led
him astray. Consciousness is the starting point of philosophy because
it is the precondition of all being, and by studying the structure of
consciousness we will get closer to the meaning of the world, matter
and time, for example. This is, of course, a strong ontological view
and differs very much from the present main stream of thought among
scientists.
I am not claiming that all being is being perceived,
because that would be silly. There is plenty of being that is never
perceived, but it is never perceived from a standpoint of a subject,
because it is impossible (for me, at least) to imagine a world that
no one has ever experienced or will ever experience. So the
subject-object relation is in the nucleus of reality.
Immanence points towards transcendence. The material
world, or universe, is transcendent, but it is transcendent for
immanence, from the standpoint of a subject.
If consciousness were a property of the brain, or matter
in general, as many scientists think, then that property should be
found somewhere in the brain. But I cannot find it in my brain or
other people's brains.
Suppose you study your brain as you think of something.
Your state of consciousness is A, in the sense of an immediate
content of experience. The state of your brain is B, physiologically
described, and there is a correlation between A and B. In fact A and
B are one and the same thing described with two different languages
or coordinate systems. A is ontologically closer than B. When we
speak of properties or states of the brain, we must, in my opinion,
stay within the physiological level. That there could emerge a new
property called consciousness, would sound strange to me, whereas the
natural view, in my opinion, is that consciousness is there already,
and the brain is the organ (in the sense of an instrument) of
consciousness.
Being is not being perceived. Being is being perceived
or not perceived by a subject and the subject's perceiving or
not-perceiving that we call consciousness. We cannot get rid of the
subject-object relation. If we remove the subject, also the object
vanishes. The object may be independent of an individual subject and
relatively independent of any subject, but it must be kept in mind
that independence is also a relation and requires something of which
an object is independent, for example, as Wittgenstein wrote in
Tractatus, a point along which the world is coordinated.
There is a point of view that is there already, a point
of view from which the world is an independent phenomenon. This may
seem paradoxical at first sight, but I think it is consistent. And
now we are back in the core of transcendental idealism. It is no use,
however, to criticize my view against the esse est percipi
argument, because I do not share that argument. But it is true that
in my view there cannot be a world without experiencing.
There is plenty of being that is not within the
experiential field, but it is in the world that is inhabited, i.e.
there is a point of view to the world. A transcendent object is an
object all the same, and requires a subject of some sort to maintain
the subject-object relation.
If there is a world, there is at least one subject for
which the world has meaning. The subject is conscious of the world,
and its consciousness consists of meanings concerning the world. But
if there is no subject, there is nothing, and nothingness is an
absurd and self-contradictory ”concept”. That is why subjectivity
is the precondition of all being. I know that from the existence of
the world the being of subjectivity does not logically follow, and
from the lack of subjectivity nothingness does not logically follow,
but I think that instead of logic the question is about seeing
reality in proper light.
The objects of the world are always beyond our immediate
experience although we have relations to them. That is why they are
transcendent. There is always something left that we do not
understand in them, and that is why we keep studying them. But in
spite of this, the subject-object relation remains, although
everybody does not accept this view, which for me is almost as
obvious as the cogito was for Descartes, an insight so
self-evident, but so difficult to formulate that it is regarded as a
great invention.
Perhaps one of the strongest arguments against my
position is this: Nowadays we have a scientific view of the universe
as a whole called cosmology. According to its present theories it is
physically and logically possible that the universe could have been
totally different from what it actually is, for example such that
there would not be a single experiencing subject. And it is a pure
chance that the universe is such as it is, with all its mice and men.
But although the concept of chance can be formulated mathematically
in modern physics, it is nevertheless a very problematic concept. To
say my strong opinion: I am not here by chance. It may or may not be
the case that my being just this person here and now is a chance, but
it surely is not a chance that there is the experience of 'I am'. But
how can I prove it? How could Descartes prove that "I am"
is true? I think that more than being a question of proof it is a
question of self-evidence, like in the case of Descartes. But I must
confess that it does not seem to be so self-evident to the majority
of people, perhaps because they are not used to reflective thinking.
Time, or temporality, is one of the basic ontological
structures of consciousness, and therefore goes through all the other
components of consciousness. The origin of time is consciousness, and
physical time cannot be understood without referring to the
phenomenological time-consciousness, or consciousness as temporality.
In physics time has in fact been impoverished by removing the basic
concepts of present, past and future.
If we try to imagine a world without subjects, we look
at the world and see a part of the world where there are no subjects,
and then we apply that situation to the whole universe. In that way
we make a concept of a subjectless universe. But that is an
abstraction, because we are not, for obvious reasons, inside
that universe. I cannot see how we can say that such a universe
exists or that it does not exist. It vanishes in the air,
loses all logic and looks like an absurdity to me.
What I think is that consciousness is the primus motor of the universe, something which strives towards the transparency of reality, or makes the universe evolve towards its transparency for itself. Therefore consciousness is always already there and is the precondition of all being.
What I think is that consciousness is the primus motor of the universe, something which strives towards the transparency of reality, or makes the universe evolve towards its transparency for itself. Therefore consciousness is always already there and is the precondition of all being.
It is true that the body and consciousness are
connected, but the body is still a transcendent object for
consciousness. I can see my body in the same way as I can see other
material objects. I would say there is a one-to-one correlation
between those two levels of being.
Material things do not exist in consciousness but are
observed through consciousness, and are also unobserved by
consciousness, having a relationship with the subject in both cases.
Of course there was no consciousness before life, but
what I am arguing is that there cannot be a universe with no subjects
at all, any time, any place, from the point of view of which the
world is experienced, wondered at and given meaning to, and that
subjectivity is the precondition of any universe whatsoever, the
primus motor for the very existence of a universe. Reality is
not blind. We are there already.
Although there was no consciousness in the universe in
the early stages of its evolution, the universe may all the time
have been in the process of creating it, which seems to be a big
process and makes us almost crazy as we are looking at it. It must be
noticed that there may also be so called formal causes for things, to
remember the classifications of Aristotle, though they are not very
popular among modern philosophers and especially scientists. It may
be the case that causal relations are only subordinate to the formal
causes when we think of the universe as a whole. What I think would
be the "form" or idea, in the Platonic sense, could be, for
example, self-consciousness in the Hegelian sense, Reality which
would be transparent to itself. But for example Sartre wrote that
Hegel was too optimistic in his scenarios.
If by the world we mean the one and only universe there
is, then the following syllogism should be valid:
1. To speak about the world, you must be in the world.
2. You cannot be in a world with no subjects.
3. Therefore you cannot say anything about a world with no subjects, not even that such a world is possible or impossible.
So, a world without subjects vanishes away, loses all logic, and the "concept" of it becomes an absurdity when we try to think about it. But what can we infer from a reductio ad absurdum?
1. To speak about the world, you must be in the world.
2. You cannot be in a world with no subjects.
3. Therefore you cannot say anything about a world with no subjects, not even that such a world is possible or impossible.
So, a world without subjects vanishes away, loses all logic, and the "concept" of it becomes an absurdity when we try to think about it. But what can we infer from a reductio ad absurdum?
By the universe I do not mean a historical part of the
universe but the whole of space-time with all its inhabitants,
whether they are there or not. And I say that it is absurd to speak
of a universe where they are not there. This is connected to my views
of the primordial status of existence in the sense of Heidegger's
Dasein and the impossibility to break the subject-object
relation even in the case of transcendent objects.
To say it in another way: If there were any logic at all
in the "concept" of a universe without subjects, that logic
should come from inside that universe (because it is the one and only
universe we are living in, only different!). But there is nothing
from which that logic could come, because logic, in my opinion,
belongs to the sphere of consciousness or subjectivity and the
relation of consciousness towards the world. Or has logic some kind
of a Platonic status, being a collection of ideas in a world of its
own?
Let us suppose that we are in a certain kind of a world,
are part of it at the same time as we are conscious of it. The world
means here the universe as a whole, it past, present and future, the
space-time with its inhabitants, which are there as we know. Now the
question is, whether there is a possible world, in the sense of
Leibniz, where nobody is judging if it is the best possible world. Is
it logically possible? Is it physically possible? Remember that it is
the one and only world there is, there are not many worlds, because
that was our presumption. To be honest, I do not believe that there
are possible worlds at all, in the sense of physically possible. In
that sense I am a determinist. And this means, as I have said, that
consciousness is a key "property" of the world we live in,
realizing the subject-object relation. I am arguing that this is the
essential structure of any world whatsoever, all worlds that are
possible, if there is more than one possible world, which I doubt.
Consciousness is in the center of existence, ontologically closest to
us, and it needs no explanation for itself by the material world,
which belongs to its existential structures, together with
temporality, and it is rather the being of the material world and
matter which needs explanation or understanding. And all this is
closely connected with the being of Others.
About possible worlds: The sentence "It is possible
that there are no people in the world" is meaningful because we
know what people are like. The sentence "It is possible that
there is no life in the world" is meaningful because we know
what life is like. But the sentence "It is possible that there
are no subjects in the world" is meaningless because the subject
is not an object or entity at all. It has no properties, being only,
as Wittgenstein says in Tractatus, a point along which the
world is coordinated. Any description of any possible world
presupposes the subject in this sense, but it cannot be included in
the description, because only entities with known properties can be
included in it. This is why the subject is always there already as a
precondition of any possible world we can imagine.
But there seems to be a paradox here. It is meaningful to say that a world without life is possible, but it is meaningless to say that a world without subjects is possible. Is it possible that there is subjectivity without life? I think not, but that is a question of physical possibilities and necessities, which is a scientific problem, not philosophical.
But there seems to be a paradox here. It is meaningful to say that a world without life is possible, but it is meaningless to say that a world without subjects is possible. Is it possible that there is subjectivity without life? I think not, but that is a question of physical possibilities and necessities, which is a scientific problem, not philosophical.
My general ontological hypothesis is that experience and
the material world are the same thing seen from the immanent and
transcendent points of view.
So I am in the world as my body. And in this world I am an experiencing subject. Now if we look at the universe as a whole, the one and only universe there is (this is the definition of the universe), the epistemological and ontological issues overlap. We cannot jump off from the world even in imagination, because it is the only world there is, and all the worlds we can imagine must contain something in common. This common feature is subjectivity, which defines the logic of all possible worlds, the possibility of which can only be secured by the concepts of our own actual world.
So I am in the world as my body. And in this world I am an experiencing subject. Now if we look at the universe as a whole, the one and only universe there is (this is the definition of the universe), the epistemological and ontological issues overlap. We cannot jump off from the world even in imagination, because it is the only world there is, and all the worlds we can imagine must contain something in common. This common feature is subjectivity, which defines the logic of all possible worlds, the possibility of which can only be secured by the concepts of our own actual world.
Although the universe was subjectless right after the
big bang, it is not, and I think it cannot be, subjectless during the
whole of space-time, be it finite or infinite. And as I have said, I
think subjectivity is the primus motor of the whole universe.
I think there is only one subject with no properties or
spatiotemporal locations. The subject is a point of view to the
world, and this point of view consists of successive experiences of
the world and usually also experiences of previous experiences. The
finite chain of experiences that consists of experiences connected
together by experiencing previous experiences, is memory. Memory
defines an individual. When the present experience no longer has any
connection to earlier experiences, the individual is dead. But time
goes on, and temporal succession is in fact the only thing that
defines subjectivity as such. As such it is tabula rasa, the
point or limit in the sense of Wittgenstein, a pure presence without
experiential content or internal properties.
My view is some sort of a sophisticated combination of
solipsism and a modified transmigration theory which, when combined
with a theory of others, makes a unified and plausible world view.
It was Lady Subject who invited Mr. World to dance. For
dance is what it is all about: life, existence, being there in the
world, not just an abstraction of the world or universe in itself.
The being of the world presupposes the being of the subject, and the
being of the subject presupposes the being of the world, and the
being of the world makes it possible for us to be there. To dance.
The universe as a whole, seen from the point of view of
eternity, as it is seen in modern cosmology, must have a cause or
reason for its being, or then it is causa sui. I think the
subject is causa sui and the formal cause, in the sense of
Aristotle, for the being of the universe.
The universe, seen as a whole, has coordinates in
space-time. This is called the history of the universe. And in
history there are subjects and objects.
I would say that the subject is causa sui and the
universe or nature in itself is not, and needs a cause for its being.
And this cause, as I have tried to say, perhaps not very
unambiguously, is the subject, which itself needs no cause for its
being, but is the formal cause (Aristotle's causa formalis)
for the being of the world or the universe or the totality of nature.
This view probably differs a lot from many others, because I think,
like Wittgenstein, that the subject does not belong to the world, but
is like a point along which the world is coordinated, or a "limit
of the world".
Consciousness is original, being always there already,
as the precondition of all being, but it is not self-existent,
because its being presupposes the being of the world and vice
versa. Epistemologically it constitutes the way we see things and
think of things, in the Kantian sense, and ontologically it
constitutes the "things in themselves" in the sense of
being the causa formalis of the totality of nature.
I understand that transcendent God transcends
immanence by being somewhere beyond or above nature, whereas
the transcendental subject transcends empirical consciousness
by being "behind" it, as the precondition of its
being. We are it, in addition to being empirical subjects.
Of course it is possible to argue that subjects are part of nature, or that God is nature itself, but I do not think so. I am in nature only as my body, not as the transcendental subject, and not even as the empirical consciousness that I am. The transcendental subject is a point of view to the world, and my empirical consciousness is the way the world appears or presents itself to me as I am this peculiar individual here and now.
This fundamental status of the transcendental subject in the center of reality has important metaphysical consequences. Material organisms die, and with them the empirical subjects the being of which those organisms have made possible. But the transcendental subject does not die, because it is not committed to any material structure. It adopts all possible empirical modes of existence, and leaves them when it is time to do so. We are one, and we are eternal.
The pantheistic approach is beautiful, and I have always thought that its views coincide with mine, but now I find that it lacks the most important principle we need: the unity of subjectivity, which makes us eternal though not immortal as individuals.
Of course it is possible to argue that subjects are part of nature, or that God is nature itself, but I do not think so. I am in nature only as my body, not as the transcendental subject, and not even as the empirical consciousness that I am. The transcendental subject is a point of view to the world, and my empirical consciousness is the way the world appears or presents itself to me as I am this peculiar individual here and now.
This fundamental status of the transcendental subject in the center of reality has important metaphysical consequences. Material organisms die, and with them the empirical subjects the being of which those organisms have made possible. But the transcendental subject does not die, because it is not committed to any material structure. It adopts all possible empirical modes of existence, and leaves them when it is time to do so. We are one, and we are eternal.
The pantheistic approach is beautiful, and I have always thought that its views coincide with mine, but now I find that it lacks the most important principle we need: the unity of subjectivity, which makes us eternal though not immortal as individuals.
I speak
about the unity of
subjectivity. I do not know if it is the proper word, but I mean
something which connects subjective experiences so that there is only
one present experience wandering through the world and adopting all
possible contents of consciousness. This is what I think of eternity.
Two
ways of seeing the the subject-world relationship:
1. Consciousness is a reflexive relation of the material world to itself. This is the materialistic point of view, and the reflexive relation gets interpreted as a property of matter.
2. The material world is a reflexive relation of the transcendental subject to itself.
1. Consciousness is a reflexive relation of the material world to itself. This is the materialistic point of view, and the reflexive relation gets interpreted as a property of matter.
2. The material world is a reflexive relation of the transcendental subject to itself.
I would
say the second alternative is more plausible.
I think
"consciousness without an object" would vanish into
nothingness. In fact it would be precisely the transcendental
subject, a point of view to the world without any properties, a point
along which the world is coordinated, to remind of Wittgenstein
again. But what I mean by consciousness, even prereflective, is
something that has some sort of content, and it can get its content
only from the world. So, in my view, 'subjectivity' and
'consciousness' have different meanings.
Although
I do not believe in transcendent God or my personal rebirth, I would
still say this: If, as I think, the subject and the world "dance
together", then if my death means that I cease to exist for
good, also the world would cease to exist for good. But because,
obviously, my death does not mean the end of the world, I will
necessarily be born as another individual, probably with no memories
of my present life. Perhaps I am such "another" individual
just now. This is what I meant by the unity of subjectivity.
Consciousness
needs the material world for its being, because the
transcendental subject that lies "behind" it, has no
properties, being only a point of view to the world.
The
view of the brain generating consciousness and consciousness being a
property of matter or the brain is very strange and implausible from
my standpoint.
My view is that the transcendental subject, being only a point of view to the world without inner properties, presupposes the being of the world and is always related to the world, and the way the world appears to the subject, is what we mean by consciousness.
Why do we need the concept of the transcendental subject? This is a good question, and the answer is connected with the most difficult existential questions we meet: death and the being of others. So what I understand by the transcendental subject is not so much a matter of epistemological issues but our deepest ontological and existential problems.
My view is that the transcendental subject, being only a point of view to the world without inner properties, presupposes the being of the world and is always related to the world, and the way the world appears to the subject, is what we mean by consciousness.
Why do we need the concept of the transcendental subject? This is a good question, and the answer is connected with the most difficult existential questions we meet: death and the being of others. So what I understand by the transcendental subject is not so much a matter of epistemological issues but our deepest ontological and existential problems.
From
the point of view of a materialistic and monistic ontology it is
certainly very natural to think that matter, in the course of its
evolution, generates consciousness as a property of the brain. But I
think it only generates the material counterpart of consciousness,
which makes it possible for the subject to exist, to be in relation
to the world. The brain or organism is sort of a mirror of
consciousness and vice versa, and consciousness is on a different
ontological level, closer to us than the material world. And it is
closer in a fundamental way, not just in terms of “degrees of
closeness”. So this leads to ontological dualism.
Consciousness is not in the brain or any other place. Imagine if your eyes were at a distance of ten meters from your body, including your brain of course, connected to your brain with nerve cables. If you would look at your body now, from far away, would you still say that your mind is in your brain or body?
Consciousness is not in the brain or any other place. Imagine if your eyes were at a distance of ten meters from your body, including your brain of course, connected to your brain with nerve cables. If you would look at your body now, from far away, would you still say that your mind is in your brain or body?
I would
say that consciousness is the subject's way of being in the world or
having a relation to the world by means of a material organism which
functions as its substrate. But the subject itself has no inner
properties, only consciousness as such, which is its way of being. So
we come to a regional ontology, where there is one way of describing
material things, and another way of describing phenomena of
consciousness. Therefore, for example, concepts like "brain-mind"
cannot be used to describe one unified field of research using the
same scientific language for both brain and mind. Only the
correlations between those two ontological levels can be described,
and that is what the discipline called physiological psychology or
cognition science should keep in mind.
I think
with Wittgenstein that the subject is a "limit of the world"
or a point along which the world is coordinated. It makes sense to
me.
My brain makes my thinking possible, but my brain does not think. I think with my brain in the same way as I see with my eyes. The brain is the organ of thinking, but in the sense of an instrument. And what is this 'I'? It is the subject, and it is not the brain or "in" the brain.
My brain makes my thinking possible, but my brain does not think. I think with my brain in the same way as I see with my eyes. The brain is the organ of thinking, but in the sense of an instrument. And what is this 'I'? It is the subject, and it is not the brain or "in" the brain.
To a
materialist:
So we
have totally opposite views on this: you say the whole organism is a
subject, I say the subject has nothing to do with an organism except
that it needs it for its being. You say my view of the subject makes
no sense, and I say your view of the subject as a material organism
makes no sense. How is it possible that two rationally thinking
people are so far away from each other in the way they see reality?
There
is only one transcendental subject and its various ways of being
related to the world, and these ways of being in the world is what we
call consciousness.
My view
is not substance dualism, because consciousness is not substance,
Descartes was wrong on this. Consciousness consists of intentional
relations, meanings, qualia and so on, but it is not any kind of
spiritual substance. However, it is on a different ontological level
than the material organism.
I have
used the terms 'individual' or 'empirical' subject to mean the way
the subject is related to the world in each case. How the identity of
an individual gets constituted is another question and from my point
of view not an easy one. I guess from the materialistic perspective
it may be easier.
A sidekick into language: Proper names denote individual or empirical subjects, but the word 'I' denotes both empirical subjects and the transcendental subject. When we talk to each other, we say “I think”, not “Markku Tamminen thinks”. If I want to ensure the other that I mean “Markku Tamminen”, if for instance the other is blind, I can use the words “I, Markku Tamminen”. The 'I' in itself denotes, perhaps first of all, the transcendental subject, because it does not tell which particular 'I' is in question. Perhaps an indirect evidence and perhaps not so convincing, but a point worth mentioning. Language is clever, wiser than many philosophers.
A professor of astrophysics once started thinking deep, and said he has wondered why the universe has had the big trouble of beginning to exist. And it is a good question, especially for philosophers. For most cosmologists and other scientists the universe needs no reason or cause for its being, and after beginning to exist for no reason, it just evolves accident by accident, according to the “laws” of probabilistic wave functions. And even consciousness is a side product of maintaining some genetic structures that compete with each other.
It is for the solution of these kinds of impossibilities that I have introduced the concepts of transcendental subject and causa formalis.
A sidekick into language: Proper names denote individual or empirical subjects, but the word 'I' denotes both empirical subjects and the transcendental subject. When we talk to each other, we say “I think”, not “Markku Tamminen thinks”. If I want to ensure the other that I mean “Markku Tamminen”, if for instance the other is blind, I can use the words “I, Markku Tamminen”. The 'I' in itself denotes, perhaps first of all, the transcendental subject, because it does not tell which particular 'I' is in question. Perhaps an indirect evidence and perhaps not so convincing, but a point worth mentioning. Language is clever, wiser than many philosophers.
A professor of astrophysics once started thinking deep, and said he has wondered why the universe has had the big trouble of beginning to exist. And it is a good question, especially for philosophers. For most cosmologists and other scientists the universe needs no reason or cause for its being, and after beginning to exist for no reason, it just evolves accident by accident, according to the “laws” of probabilistic wave functions. And even consciousness is a side product of maintaining some genetic structures that compete with each other.
It is for the solution of these kinds of impossibilities that I have introduced the concepts of transcendental subject and causa formalis.
Let's
imagine a world with two people A and B, each with consciousness as
its material property. You are A.
1. Why are you A, not B? How can anyone explain that? What makes the difference?
2. If B dies, B loses consciousness, but the world goes on. But if A dies, in other words if you die, what happens to the world? I suggest you think it over and not just assume as self-evident. A bit of reflective concentrating! Remember that you are dead.
1. Why are you A, not B? How can anyone explain that? What makes the difference?
2. If B dies, B loses consciousness, but the world goes on. But if A dies, in other words if you die, what happens to the world? I suggest you think it over and not just assume as self-evident. A bit of reflective concentrating! Remember that you are dead.
The
basic axiom of existence is this: If I cease to exist for good, also
the world ceases to exist for good, and even so that it has never
existed. This is self-evident for me, in the spirit of
Descartes.
However, it is clear and obvious for everybody that my death does not mean the end of the world.
Therefore it is necessary that I, as a manifestation of subjectivity, as an individual subject of some kind, must be in the world as long as the world exists, and that means for ever, because there is no such thing as nonexistence. This is what I mean by the universal and fundamental character of the subject-object relation, and the postulate that the subject is the precondition of all being.
However, it is clear and obvious for everybody that my death does not mean the end of the world.
Therefore it is necessary that I, as a manifestation of subjectivity, as an individual subject of some kind, must be in the world as long as the world exists, and that means for ever, because there is no such thing as nonexistence. This is what I mean by the universal and fundamental character of the subject-object relation, and the postulate that the subject is the precondition of all being.
I
really say, and it seems that also Wittgenstein says, that the world
would cease to exist for good if I cease to exist for good. And what
helps to avoid this catastrophe - and this is my view, not
Wittgenstein's - is that the transcendental subject is really
eternal and only adopts those various ways of being we call
individual subjects or consciousnesses.
The
concept of transcendental subject transmigrating through all the
points of view to the world we call individuals makes the situation
normal again. Only this way the world does not vanish away when I
die.
I have
taken the concept of transcendental subject to my conceptual
repertoire. By it I mean the ontological I, which is the eternal
viewpoint to the world and adopts all the different ways of being in
the world we call individual subjects. This demands further
elaboration.
My
point is that the universe needs a reason of its being, and I have
introduced the old Aristotelian concept of causa formalis,
which I interpret as the transcendental subject which tends towards
self-consciousness or transparency of being. This concept is
something like the absolute spirit of Hegel, although I do not
believe in spiritual substances. Causa formalis is in us.
The
thesis can also be expressed so that my nonexistence is absurd as
such, it not only loses the world and time, but all logic as well. So
it is reductio ad absurdum, and therefore cannot be accepted.
But death is real, though, and that is the paradox.
If,
hypothetically, the universe would be born with a big bang for a
subject, i.e. if the subject were the reason for its being, then it
would be of no difference how long it would have taken for
consciousness to appear. So time has nothing to do with this.
Just to
make it still more clear what I mean by the transcendental
subject:
I have said that it is 'a point of view to the world'. Now there are three parts in that expression:
1. a point
2. a view
3. the world
'A point' is the transcendental subject itself, an abstraction without independent being, the Wittgensteinian "limit of the world" or a point along which the world gets coordinated. It has no internal or external properties (although it must have some "metaphysical" properties to make it intelligible in the deepest sense, but that is another story).
'A view' is the way in which the subject is related to the world, and this is exactly what consciousness is. It has properties that are non-material, constituting a realm of its own, an ontological layer which is closest to us. Therefore it is also an independent research field, the field of phenomenology and psychology.
'The world' is what makes it possible for the transcendental subject to have a point of view, i.e. to be an individual subject or consciousness, i.e. to be at all, to exist. Our bodies belong to this material realm, being the "substrate" of consciousness (I am not sure if it is the right word). This is also the research field of so called proper sciences, as opposed to humanities.
I have said that it is 'a point of view to the world'. Now there are three parts in that expression:
1. a point
2. a view
3. the world
'A point' is the transcendental subject itself, an abstraction without independent being, the Wittgensteinian "limit of the world" or a point along which the world gets coordinated. It has no internal or external properties (although it must have some "metaphysical" properties to make it intelligible in the deepest sense, but that is another story).
'A view' is the way in which the subject is related to the world, and this is exactly what consciousness is. It has properties that are non-material, constituting a realm of its own, an ontological layer which is closest to us. Therefore it is also an independent research field, the field of phenomenology and psychology.
'The world' is what makes it possible for the transcendental subject to have a point of view, i.e. to be an individual subject or consciousness, i.e. to be at all, to exist. Our bodies belong to this material realm, being the "substrate" of consciousness (I am not sure if it is the right word). This is also the research field of so called proper sciences, as opposed to humanities.
I do
not really claim that my death means the end of the world. Who could
claim that? But what I claim and what I find evident is what
Wittgenstein means by saying that ”my world ceases”. If my world
ceases, logic ceases as well, and my death becomes an absurdity. All
the same, this is metaphysically incompatible with the obvious truth
that the world goes on after my death, and therefore needs a
metaphysical synthesis of those two obvious but incompatible truths.
So this is metaphysics and goes beyond logic.
My
experience tells me nothing when I am dead. My world ends, or ceases,
as Wittgenstein says. And, of course, the world of facts does not
end, but it is just that obvious truth that is incompatible with the
first truth, because my death would be absurd if I were not eternal
in the sense of being always there in one way or other, as some
individual subject with its special kind of consciousness. The
vanishing of my world for good would, from the existential point of
view, be a total vanishing of the factual world as well. But the
world is there, it has not vanished. A paradox par excellence.
And the solution by means of the concept of transcendental subject
leads to a combination of solipsism and a modified transmigration
theory. But that is metaphysics if anything.
How can
there be several metaphysical I's? Who are the others? If there were
many I's in the sense Wittgenstein means, they would be entities in
the world, or facts of the world, i.e. material subjects. They would
not be "limits of the world".
If I
eat an apple instead of not eating an apple, I make a decision. If I
eat an apple, the material world is different compared to the case I
do not eat an apple. But what is the difference between my decision
being free or not free? What does 'free' mean? I decide, is that not
enough? Is something not happening according to laws of nature? Does
my decision have something that has not a counterpart in the material
world? If my decision is free, whatever it means, also the material
world is free, because, in my opinion, consciousness and its material
counterpart are the same thing seen from two ontological levels.
But really, what does 'freedom of the will' mean? Has the expression a real function or use in our language?
But really, what does 'freedom of the will' mean? Has the expression a real function or use in our language?
Ontologically
we should speak about acts, for practical purposes we can speak about
free or not free acts depending on circumstances that effect our
acts, e.g. intentional and unintentional acts etc. There are,
however, philosophers like Sartre who think that freedom is an
ontological concept, because there is no causal connection between
our acts, just "nothingness", as he says. Man is for him "a
hole in the universe".
Our way
of thinking about death is in the end quite superficial, perhaps
because we are unconsciously afraid of it. We think there is no
problem in thinking that the world goes on after our death. From the
death of others we see that it does go on. But we do not dare to
imagine what our ceasing to exist means, and I mean ceasing for good.
My nonexistence for good is absurd and therefore impossible. My
existence is not dependent on time. I exist or I do not exist,
independent on time, and the latter is unthinkable for me, and I
argue that those for whom it is thinkable have not thought it over.
But the metaphysical consequences of all this are somewhat
embarrassing.
My
point is that the ceasing of my world for good and with it the
ceasing of logic and time for me is more serious to the world and our
reality than most of us think. Therefore we need some metaphysics.
A
metaphysical syllogism:
1. The basic insight of Descartes, that I am, should be modified so that my self-evident existence is not dependent on time. Time is a property of existence, existence is not a property of time, so that there would be times at which I exist and other times at which I do not exist. This leads to solipsism.
2. All experiences are my experiences, because that is the meaning and idea of experience. Experiencing means presence, i.e. that something is here and now. There cannot be experiences that I am not experiencing, have not experienced or shall not experience, i.e. absent experiences. However, there are others with their own experiences. This leads to transmigration.
3. Therefore a satisfactory metaphysical world view is a sophisticated combination of solipsism and a modified transmigration theory, both of which are widely abandoned by philosophers, but in this combination they become plausible and consistent, and this theory is, as far as I can see, a necessary consequence of the premises. But I am sure that both the premises and the consequence are seen as nonsense among most philosophers. However, this is how I see the reality we are sharing. My view is paradoxical, but I think only on the level of language, because language presupposes the others as given. Therefore what I have tried to do is in fact precisely what was the conclusion of Tractatus and what should not be done: to speak about the unspeakable. Another thing to be noticed is this: if you have really understood what I am trying to say, you should feel some embarrassment as soon as you realize what it really means if it is true. I myself feel embarrassment.
1. The basic insight of Descartes, that I am, should be modified so that my self-evident existence is not dependent on time. Time is a property of existence, existence is not a property of time, so that there would be times at which I exist and other times at which I do not exist. This leads to solipsism.
2. All experiences are my experiences, because that is the meaning and idea of experience. Experiencing means presence, i.e. that something is here and now. There cannot be experiences that I am not experiencing, have not experienced or shall not experience, i.e. absent experiences. However, there are others with their own experiences. This leads to transmigration.
3. Therefore a satisfactory metaphysical world view is a sophisticated combination of solipsism and a modified transmigration theory, both of which are widely abandoned by philosophers, but in this combination they become plausible and consistent, and this theory is, as far as I can see, a necessary consequence of the premises. But I am sure that both the premises and the consequence are seen as nonsense among most philosophers. However, this is how I see the reality we are sharing. My view is paradoxical, but I think only on the level of language, because language presupposes the others as given. Therefore what I have tried to do is in fact precisely what was the conclusion of Tractatus and what should not be done: to speak about the unspeakable. Another thing to be noticed is this: if you have really understood what I am trying to say, you should feel some embarrassment as soon as you realize what it really means if it is true. I myself feel embarrassment.
I have
my point of view to the world, and you have your point of view to the
world. So there seems to be two metaphysical subjects. I think there
must be a concrete relation between our points of view. If the
relation is only that factual relation, a fact of the world, which we
all know, then there must be several points of view. In fact I accept
the concept of the metaphysical I, but we need to establish a
concrete relation between those several points of view, and that is
why I have introduced the concept of transcendental subject, which is
the unifying principle between them, but it needs the transmigration
part to complete the concrete picture, because I think Wittgenstein's
view lacks concreteness and is very difficult to understand.
I think
we must modify the old eastern thought of the transmigration of souls
so that there is only one transcendental subject that adopts all the
ways of being in the world we call individual subjects. How this is
possible, and how it takes place concretely, we probably cannot know,
but it is a hypothesis that answers many difficult existential
questions, which many religions have failed to answer, for example:
what does it mean to die?
Consciousness
is so self-evident that it needs no explaining, because we
essentially are what is meant by it. So let us try to explain
other things like matter, the universe and the being of others, and
leave our own being, consciousness, where it belongs, as the
self-evident starting point. This is, of course, an ontological
argument against materialism, which tries to explain consciousness by
physical concepts.
I have
used the concept of consciousness in the general sense meaning all
forms of subjectivity as opposed to the being of stones, computers
etc. that are not conscious because they are not subjects.
Consciousness in this sense constitutes an ontological level of its
own which differs conceptually from the material world in a radical
manner, although there is probably a one-to-one correspondence or
correlation between them.
If the
universe consists of matter, and if matter is all there is, and if
everything is reducible to the interaction of elementary particles,
as many scientists say nowadays, then consciousness must be a
reflexive relation of matter to itself, seen as a property of matter.
In this sense consciousness would be the cosmos perceiving itself.
But from the materialistic point of view this matter's property of
seeing itself would not be necessary. We only happen to be here,
seeing the world around us, and the world could just as well be there
without us. This seems very implausible to me.
I think we must turn the picture upside down. What it self-evident is the being of the transcendental subject, the Cartesian 'I am', or the 'metaphysical I' of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which is the precondition of all being, something we cannot get rid of. But the being of the subject presupposes the being of the material world, which in turn can be interpreted as my relation to the others. The world is material because the others must be material in order to be in relation to me. But the others, just because they are others, i.e. other subjects, are manifestations of the transcendental subject, the very same 'I am'. So in the end the world, or universe, just because it is material, is the relation of the transcendental subject to itself, or my relation to myself. And this makes reality causa sui, potentially transparent to itself, and the being of the universe needs no explanation, because it is the relation of the self-evident subjectivity to itself, not the transcendent, irrational element that Sartre saw as “superfluous”.
To complete the picture, an additional element is needed, not so popular nowadays but necessary in this context, namely a modified concept of transmigration. So the transcendental subject has a spatial and temporal relation to itself. The spatial relation, through the material universe, guarantees its being in general and maybe in the end its transparency to itself, and the temporal relation, through transmigration, guarantees its eternal being.
Now, this is speculation, of course, and a metaphysical hypothesis, but I think philosophers must have some courage in addition to critical mind.
I think we must turn the picture upside down. What it self-evident is the being of the transcendental subject, the Cartesian 'I am', or the 'metaphysical I' of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which is the precondition of all being, something we cannot get rid of. But the being of the subject presupposes the being of the material world, which in turn can be interpreted as my relation to the others. The world is material because the others must be material in order to be in relation to me. But the others, just because they are others, i.e. other subjects, are manifestations of the transcendental subject, the very same 'I am'. So in the end the world, or universe, just because it is material, is the relation of the transcendental subject to itself, or my relation to myself. And this makes reality causa sui, potentially transparent to itself, and the being of the universe needs no explanation, because it is the relation of the self-evident subjectivity to itself, not the transcendent, irrational element that Sartre saw as “superfluous”.
To complete the picture, an additional element is needed, not so popular nowadays but necessary in this context, namely a modified concept of transmigration. So the transcendental subject has a spatial and temporal relation to itself. The spatial relation, through the material universe, guarantees its being in general and maybe in the end its transparency to itself, and the temporal relation, through transmigration, guarantees its eternal being.
Now, this is speculation, of course, and a metaphysical hypothesis, but I think philosophers must have some courage in addition to critical mind.
When I
think, something happens in my brain. So there is a correlation
between my brain and my thinking. Therefore it is very easy for us to
make the conclusion that a certain kind of event or set of events in
the material world always means a corresponding conscious state. But
this is a mistake. My brain does not think. I think with my brain in
the same way as I see with my eyes. So there is always the subject
already, and the body is its instrument for consciousness. And a
computer or robot is our instrument, an extension of our
bodies, although it can simulate our behavior. A computer is not a
subject and therefore not conscious.
'I'
denotes (1) an individual, (2) the subject of the present experience
("here and now").
'You' denotes an individual.
If 'I' denotes the subject of the present experience, the following sentences should be true:
If you did not exist, the world would still exist.
If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
Therefore, because the world exists, I exist necessarily and eternally.
And all of you are manifestations of the 'I'.
I guess Wittgenstein would not like these kinds of language games, but there are things that cannot be expressed in ordinary language. Also poetic and seemingly paradoxical phrases can illuminate reality. I like Heidegger's style more than Wittgenstein's although there are many similarities between their thoughts, for example their critique of the "present-at-hand" ontology.
Still one observation:
When we say that the being of the world does not need our being, we contradict ourselves, because there is already the 'our being' presupposed. We must only clarify to ourselves the meaning of the 'we'.
'You' denotes an individual.
If 'I' denotes the subject of the present experience, the following sentences should be true:
If you did not exist, the world would still exist.
If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
Therefore, because the world exists, I exist necessarily and eternally.
And all of you are manifestations of the 'I'.
I guess Wittgenstein would not like these kinds of language games, but there are things that cannot be expressed in ordinary language. Also poetic and seemingly paradoxical phrases can illuminate reality. I like Heidegger's style more than Wittgenstein's although there are many similarities between their thoughts, for example their critique of the "present-at-hand" ontology.
Still one observation:
When we say that the being of the world does not need our being, we contradict ourselves, because there is already the 'our being' presupposed. We must only clarify to ourselves the meaning of the 'we'.
Isn't
experience something that defines consciousness? Matter does not have
experiences although materialists keep insisting so. We have no
experiences when we sleep without dreaming. When I have now this
experience and then another experience, I am conscious. So
temporality is another characteristic of consciousness (in the sense
of original time, not physical). When I have no experiences, I am not
conscious. So it seems to me that it is an on-off situation: an
entity either is or is not conscious. And I wonder if a robot has an
experience of time. Should we ask it/him/her?
I think
that material objects are our instruments for being. This includes
our brains and our computers. We think with our brains, and we use
computers and robots for our own purposes. It is true that matter
generates structures of consciousness, but for a potential
consciousness. The properties of matter must have a reason for their
being just those properties that make consciousness possible, and
that reason can only come from consciousness itself, from the being
of the subject.
By
original time I mean the series of successive experiences: the
present vanishing into the past and a new present appearing from the
horizon of the future. Physical time is only an interval of spacetime
where the present, for example, is ambiguous, and to speak of
directly experiencing such time has no sense. It would be interesting
to study the relation of these two time concepts. As can be seen from
the word 'original' I see the subjective time concept more
fundamental than the physical.
The
internal logic of subjective time is such that (1) it never stands
still, (2) the past is always before the present and the future.
These are not facts, they are pure logic. The physical time, instead,
according to general relativity, allows time in certain conditions
(1) to stop, (2) to move backwards, (3) to take the role of space.
Therefore it differs very much from our ordinary concept of time.
Suppose
I have an experience with a content A and then an experience with a
content B. There is nothing between them, and in fact they constitute
an elementary unit of time. What causes the experience of a flow of
time, or identity of myself, is the fact that in the content B there
must be something which refers to A, in the same way as there is a
reference to the transcendent world. This reference is the basis of
memory. So memory defines an individual.
I think
that when we speak about subjective, phenomenal time or experiencing
time we should use phenomenological concepts, not concepts of
physics, because the relations between those two kinds of concepts
may not be simple.
We should notice the difference between experiencing and the content of experience, or the content of the present. Experiencing something is an event that creates the content of that experience, an event that can also be described on the physiological level. But the content of the present is something that is created all at the same time, within one and the same event of experiencing. And the whole content is there at the same time, at present. Two successive contents have nothing between them, i.e. no content. But a content of experience has characteristics that refer to contents of earlier experiences, which makes it possible for us to perceive phenomena that have duration, such as melodies, for example. Husserl's concept of retention comes to mind.
So I think that subjective time consists of units created by experiencing events, but the perception of time is perception of durations. And it is possible that subjective time as such cannot be perceived at all.
We should notice the difference between experiencing and the content of experience, or the content of the present. Experiencing something is an event that creates the content of that experience, an event that can also be described on the physiological level. But the content of the present is something that is created all at the same time, within one and the same event of experiencing. And the whole content is there at the same time, at present. Two successive contents have nothing between them, i.e. no content. But a content of experience has characteristics that refer to contents of earlier experiences, which makes it possible for us to perceive phenomena that have duration, such as melodies, for example. Husserl's concept of retention comes to mind.
So I think that subjective time consists of units created by experiencing events, but the perception of time is perception of durations. And it is possible that subjective time as such cannot be perceived at all.
We can
ask someone "Are you conscious?" or "Are you alive?",
but it makes no sense to ask myself such questions. I think this
tells us something about the logical and ontological status of
consciousness. Being unconscious is an exceptional phenomenon from my
point of view, which is the crucial point of view.
The big
question is: What is the world that ceases to exist? Is it only my
personal world, or my point of view to the world? Or the world in
itself? And is the nothingness that my death means to me if I lose my
existence for good, nothingness of all being? In that case
nothingness would in fact exist in the sense that now there is
something and when I am dead there is nothing.
But, you may say, the world still exists after you are dead, although you are nothing. So it is still true that nothingness in the absolute sense does not exist. And it is obvious that when someone else dies, the world goes on. And if the situation is symmetrical, the same should apply to myself as well.
But the situation is not symmetrical if my death means my nonexistence for good. What is the sense of saying that there is something if I do not exist as a point of reference to the world? This seems to be extremely difficult to understand although it is so self-evident. It only requires trying to imagine what the being of the world would mean if I were not there. To imagine such a situation is impossible, because there would be no situation. And it is not very good metaphysics to found one's ontology on something that cannot be imagined.
So there is a paradox here, and the paradox can be solved by making the inevitable conclusion that I do not lose my existence for good although I lose my personal existence. This is pure logic. And my being as the transcendental subject makes it possible that my relation to other individuals is symmetrical after all.
If I, as the transcendental subject, did not exist, there would be nothing, which is absurd. This is the key insight of my philosophy and the premise of all the metaphysical hypotheses that I have proposed, and if someone proves that it need not or cannot be so, all my thinking collapses and I am ready to turn my views about reality upside down.
But, you may say, the world still exists after you are dead, although you are nothing. So it is still true that nothingness in the absolute sense does not exist. And it is obvious that when someone else dies, the world goes on. And if the situation is symmetrical, the same should apply to myself as well.
But the situation is not symmetrical if my death means my nonexistence for good. What is the sense of saying that there is something if I do not exist as a point of reference to the world? This seems to be extremely difficult to understand although it is so self-evident. It only requires trying to imagine what the being of the world would mean if I were not there. To imagine such a situation is impossible, because there would be no situation. And it is not very good metaphysics to found one's ontology on something that cannot be imagined.
So there is a paradox here, and the paradox can be solved by making the inevitable conclusion that I do not lose my existence for good although I lose my personal existence. This is pure logic. And my being as the transcendental subject makes it possible that my relation to other individuals is symmetrical after all.
If I, as the transcendental subject, did not exist, there would be nothing, which is absurd. This is the key insight of my philosophy and the premise of all the metaphysical hypotheses that I have proposed, and if someone proves that it need not or cannot be so, all my thinking collapses and I am ready to turn my views about reality upside down.
When we
speak about contents of consciousness, this already means some kind
of discreteness. A content cannot exist at several moments of time,
its being constitutes one moment, an elementary unit of time. But
because it contains elements of retention, references to earlier
contents of experience, we can experience the flow of time or a
melody that has duration. Also those phenomena belong to the content
which is in itself timeless, i.e. cannot be divided temporally. So
consciousness consists of successive contents of experience with
nothing between them.
The
three spatial dimensions make the form through which the material
world appears to us. And because we exist temporally, that is, our
being consists of successive experiences of the world, also the world
must be temporal, consisting of material events. We measure those
events with our clocks, and now the situation becomes a bit more
complicated, because those clocks go slower or faster depending on
our position in relation to the clocks. Space and time get
intertwined, and we have the concept of space-time, which is the
result of applying and extending our original, subjective time to the
material world.
The
reason for existence in general is the fact that "Non-being is
not" is a tautology. Why existence takes the shape of Homo
sapiens is another question and leads us to wonder if all the
species that evolution produces are necessary or not, and what is the
meaning of randomness.
Consciousness
need not be present at all times during the history of the universe,
and it surely was not in the beginning, but the universe must be such
that consciousness (i.e. us), ”emerges” at some point of
space-time. Only on that presupposition we can meaningfully say that
there is anything at all. So consciousness is essential for the very
being of the universe.
My
thoughts are part of my individual consciousness or empirical
subject, because I can describe them. But the I who describes them
can also observe, accept, criticize or reject them, and take many
other attitudes at them. This I is something that cannot be
described, because it has no properties, and it does not characterize
me as an individual. On the contrary, I can even reject myself as an
individual subject by committing suicide. I transcend myself, and in
this role I can call myself the transcendental I. My view is that
this I is universal and connects all of us to each other through the
common flow of existence.
We are
nothing in front of the almighty universe that runs its own course
and does not care about the tiny accident that we are.
But, on the other hand, each of us is everything there is. Each of us is the universe.
If these pictures are incompatible, I choose the latter.
But, on the other hand, each of us is everything there is. Each of us is the universe.
If these pictures are incompatible, I choose the latter.
My
world view is grounded on these basic insights:
1. If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
2. All experiences are mine.
Now these are paradoxical statements, because when I die, the world goes on, and there are certainly other individual subjects with their own experiences. So if those two principles are true, this must have some metaphysical consequences:
1. I am eternal.
2. We are all manifestations of one and the same 'I am'.
I think there is only one transcendental subject, transcendental in the sense that I transcend my individual self. It is the 'I am', the I who is just now having these experiences. In this role I am essentially temporal, a succession of experiences as the 'now' flows forward. All the individual subjects in the universe are manifestations of this 'I am', which is eternal although it must have had a beginning, for else I could not be here now.
My experiences are experiences of the world, and the world is, according to my hypothesis, my relation to other individual subjects, and in the end my relation to myself, which makes the universe causa sui, needing no other reason or cause to exist than itself, because the 'I am' is self-evident and not an accidental fact. I think the transcendental subject has an intrinsic property of, or tendency towards, self-transparency, which explains all the phenomena we are used to seeing as evolution, for example. And because my being consists of being in relation to other individuals, this relation must necessarily be material, as well as the others themselves, and also I as an individual. In fact matter can be defined as just that. So we are minds and bodies.
Because I am essentially temporal, I cannot have my being as another subject if I do not reincarnate or transmigrate and be born as that other. The others must be in my future or in my past, because they are not in my present as immediate experiences. This, however, leads to a new way of understanding the relation between subjective time and the time of the world. So the universal I demands, for its being, (1) the material world as its relationship with itself, which guarantees its being in general and its transparency for itself, and (2) transmigration, which guarantees its symmetry among all its manifestations and the principle that there are no foreign experiences that are absent rather than present.
It is true that this concept of transmigration leads to a gloomy picture of existence. We all have our own projects that collapse when we die, especially if we do not leave some cultural traces of us for the other manifestations to see and laugh at. It is like Sisyphus pushing the stone uphill and letting it roll back when he reaches the top.
This also leads to a strictly deterministic world view: everything has in a way already happened, because we can meet our past in the world and seemingly act on it.
So I would not say there is any other creator than the transcendental I that is the primus motor of everything and which has its own inner logic of being, a logic that we do not fully understand yet, but which hopefully becomes more understandable in the course of our cosmic evolution. I may be too optimistic, though.
1. If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
2. All experiences are mine.
Now these are paradoxical statements, because when I die, the world goes on, and there are certainly other individual subjects with their own experiences. So if those two principles are true, this must have some metaphysical consequences:
1. I am eternal.
2. We are all manifestations of one and the same 'I am'.
I think there is only one transcendental subject, transcendental in the sense that I transcend my individual self. It is the 'I am', the I who is just now having these experiences. In this role I am essentially temporal, a succession of experiences as the 'now' flows forward. All the individual subjects in the universe are manifestations of this 'I am', which is eternal although it must have had a beginning, for else I could not be here now.
My experiences are experiences of the world, and the world is, according to my hypothesis, my relation to other individual subjects, and in the end my relation to myself, which makes the universe causa sui, needing no other reason or cause to exist than itself, because the 'I am' is self-evident and not an accidental fact. I think the transcendental subject has an intrinsic property of, or tendency towards, self-transparency, which explains all the phenomena we are used to seeing as evolution, for example. And because my being consists of being in relation to other individuals, this relation must necessarily be material, as well as the others themselves, and also I as an individual. In fact matter can be defined as just that. So we are minds and bodies.
Because I am essentially temporal, I cannot have my being as another subject if I do not reincarnate or transmigrate and be born as that other. The others must be in my future or in my past, because they are not in my present as immediate experiences. This, however, leads to a new way of understanding the relation between subjective time and the time of the world. So the universal I demands, for its being, (1) the material world as its relationship with itself, which guarantees its being in general and its transparency for itself, and (2) transmigration, which guarantees its symmetry among all its manifestations and the principle that there are no foreign experiences that are absent rather than present.
It is true that this concept of transmigration leads to a gloomy picture of existence. We all have our own projects that collapse when we die, especially if we do not leave some cultural traces of us for the other manifestations to see and laugh at. It is like Sisyphus pushing the stone uphill and letting it roll back when he reaches the top.
This also leads to a strictly deterministic world view: everything has in a way already happened, because we can meet our past in the world and seemingly act on it.
So I would not say there is any other creator than the transcendental I that is the primus motor of everything and which has its own inner logic of being, a logic that we do not fully understand yet, but which hopefully becomes more understandable in the course of our cosmic evolution. I may be too optimistic, though.
By the
concept of transcendental subject I mean something similar to the
metaphysical I of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. It has no
properties, being only a point along which the world is coordinated.
It has being only in its manifestation as an individual subject in
the world. It is not a thing of any kind. It is what connects one
individual self to another individual self making subjective time one
unified flow of events across the space-time of the universe.
As to the necessity of such a concept, I cannot present a logical proof for it. It is a metaphysical hypothesis made to explain some fundamental paradoxes of our existence, for example the paradox of death, and the insights that led me to build this scenario are too difficult to analyze logically, at least for my capacities at the moment.
But although I think it is a plausible view of reality, I understand that most people have not thought about things from this perspective. For them this is nothing but bad poetry, a joke, but it only shows how different our ways of thinking can be.
As to the necessity of such a concept, I cannot present a logical proof for it. It is a metaphysical hypothesis made to explain some fundamental paradoxes of our existence, for example the paradox of death, and the insights that led me to build this scenario are too difficult to analyze logically, at least for my capacities at the moment.
But although I think it is a plausible view of reality, I understand that most people have not thought about things from this perspective. For them this is nothing but bad poetry, a joke, but it only shows how different our ways of thinking can be.
As to
reification: When I say "I am Markku Tamminen" and you say
"I am NN" we make a reification of the 'I am' as two
different persons, and there is nothing wrong in that. But when I say
"I exist" and you say "I exist" and we say there
are two subjects existing, we make a reification that we should not
make. There is only one I existing, only its content of existence
varies as time goes by and it adopts all its various manifestations
as individual subjects. In fact we should not even say "There is
one I existing" because that implies some kind of substance, we
can only say "I exist" or "I am", which is a kind
of an expression of self-evidence referring to the transcendental I.
Note
the distinction between 'transcendent' and 'transcendental'. The
material world is transcendent, meaning 'outside of us', as opposed
to our experience of it, which philosophers call immanence, meaning
'that which is immediately present to us'. The term 'transcendental'
belongs to the realm of subjectivity, and the transcendental subject,
as I see it, is the precondition of all being whatsoever,
transcending our individual experiences. It is what we are from the
perspective of our eternal being. This is, however, my own
interpretation of the concept, and perhaps Kant, for example, had
another meaning in his mind.
What I
am trying to say is that there is no permanent self, only a "point
of view" to the world, and this point of view can only have
being as an individual subject or succession of experiences. But what
is not so self-evident to all is that this point, which I call the
transcendental I, or the 'I am', is the principle of unification
between all individuals, a presence wandering through all reality.
This is metaphysics, of course, not science, but I see no logical
contradiction in it.
The
being of the presence is always presence for an individual self, but
according to my hypothesis there is a temporal connection between
those individual subjects. This may or may not be illusory and it is
based on an insight that may or may not be illusory.
The key
is the impossibility of foreign experiences. In the pantheistic
scenario there are experiences that are foreign to me although all
individuals are "the same" in some way. The temporal
connection makes this sameness concrete so that all experiences are
mine, only at different moments of subjective time as the present
flows on. This also guarantees the symmetry and equality between the
existence of all individuals. So this is the rational basis of
ethics.
The Eastern concept of transmigration with 'karma' etc. is not satisfactory as I see it, because it presupposes a memory of some kind between individuals, which I think is impossible. I think memory defines an individual. So the concept of transmigration must be modified somehow.
As to 'somethingness' and 'nothingness', I would say that the contents of experience are ”somethingness” and the metaphysical subject that goes through all experiences even beyond an individual subject's experiences is what can be called ”nothingness”. In fact I think there is nothing between two successive experiences and nothing between two successive individuals except the temporal succession. And I think this is the origin of time and its original meaning: a succession of "nows".
The Eastern concept of transmigration with 'karma' etc. is not satisfactory as I see it, because it presupposes a memory of some kind between individuals, which I think is impossible. I think memory defines an individual. So the concept of transmigration must be modified somehow.
As to 'somethingness' and 'nothingness', I would say that the contents of experience are ”somethingness” and the metaphysical subject that goes through all experiences even beyond an individual subject's experiences is what can be called ”nothingness”. In fact I think there is nothing between two successive experiences and nothing between two successive individuals except the temporal succession. And I think this is the origin of time and its original meaning: a succession of "nows".
I think
a modified concept of transmigration is needed to complete the
picture, to make it concrete. The 'I am' cannot be present for
everyone without a temporal connection between individual subjects.
And the Absolute is not transcendent, it is the metaphysical subject
which is the 'I am' in the deepest sense. This is how I see things at
the moment.
I would
say we are separate spatially but one temporally, i.e. in the flow of
subjective time. I am this person now, not anyone else, but I do not
know who or what I have been or who or what I will be as time goes
by. This is what I mean by the modified concept of transmigration.
Subjective time does not always follow physical time but sometimes
leaps into physical past adopting the existence of another subject.
This may seem paradoxical, though, and perhaps makes the hypothesis
less plausible, but I see no logical contradiction in it. It is a
clear but embarrassing idea, if really understood, and solves many
existential paradoxes that are difficult to solve in any other way,
leaving many problems still open for philosophers to attack on.
Solipsism
is not conceivable without transmigration, because there are several
of us here, and because our existence is temporal, there has to be a
temporal connection between us if we are all manifestations of the
universal consciousness.
I think
we cannot jump outside of time. Existence is temporal. Any
manifestation of the universal consciousness, or the metaphysical I
of Wittgenstein, is temporal, and to contain all of us as its
manifestations, it must be a succession of concrete presents beyond
individual existence. And it must manifest itself as a concrete,
present 'I am here now'. That is why transmigration is necessary: for
concreteness.
I would
not say time and matter are illusions, they are very real, in the
core of our existence. This is in accordance with ontological
idealism, the view I defend, although consciousness is the
fundamental reality.
Consciousness
and the material world are both very real, and so is time, because we
exist by having successive experiences of the material world. I
cannot imagine a world where we would not be conscious of the
material world in a flow of experiences, because I cannot imagine a
world or reality that is truly transcendent without immanence.
Each of
us is a subject, an I. Each of us can say: “I exist.” Now I can
say to someone: “If you did not exist, the world would still be
almost the same as it is now”, and there seems to be nothing wrong
in saying so. But if someone says to me the same thing, I begin to
think about it and translate it into my own language: “If I did not
exist, the world would still be almost the same as it is now.” I
get perplexed and start thinking about my nonexistence, and get still
more perplexed. What does it mean to say ”I would not exist”? How
can I understand a world where I would not exist? Is there a
fundamental asymmetry between me and others? And if there is, what
does it mean? Can we explain reality in a way that saves its
symmetry?
To make
it clear, I see these self-evident facts: (1) there must be symmetry
between us, (2) the being of the world is independent of my personal
existence. The question is: how is this possible? What is it that
saves the being of the world from my nonexistence?
To
describe the seeming asymmetry between us:
There are many subjects in the universe, and I am one of them, an individual called Markku Tamminen. But why am I not the individual called Mahatma Gandhi, for example, or an ant? What connects me to this particular person Markku Tamminen? If I had no connection to or identity with any individual subject in the universe and the universe still contained all the subjects including a person called Markku Tamminen, i.e. if I did not exist but Markku Tamminen would exist with the same subjective properties as now, the community of subjects would be symmetric, but now that I exist as Markku Tamminen, it seems to be asymmetric. So the point is: what connects me to a particular subject although there are many subjects in the world? What makes me identical with Markku Tamminen and not identical with Elisabeth Taylor? Or why do I not feel the hunger of a starving man?
Perhaps it is these kinds of questions that made some people invent such concepts as the universal consciousness, Brahman and the like, and it is also these kinds of questions that made me create those language games that I have been playing. Some of you may find them funny, some of you may find them nonsense, but for me they are serious attempts to answer concrete existential questions.
Wittgenstein was wrong if he thought that all metaphysical language games are useless play of words. Some of them may be, others are not, and I leave it for others to decide to which category my games belong.
There are many subjects in the universe, and I am one of them, an individual called Markku Tamminen. But why am I not the individual called Mahatma Gandhi, for example, or an ant? What connects me to this particular person Markku Tamminen? If I had no connection to or identity with any individual subject in the universe and the universe still contained all the subjects including a person called Markku Tamminen, i.e. if I did not exist but Markku Tamminen would exist with the same subjective properties as now, the community of subjects would be symmetric, but now that I exist as Markku Tamminen, it seems to be asymmetric. So the point is: what connects me to a particular subject although there are many subjects in the world? What makes me identical with Markku Tamminen and not identical with Elisabeth Taylor? Or why do I not feel the hunger of a starving man?
Perhaps it is these kinds of questions that made some people invent such concepts as the universal consciousness, Brahman and the like, and it is also these kinds of questions that made me create those language games that I have been playing. Some of you may find them funny, some of you may find them nonsense, but for me they are serious attempts to answer concrete existential questions.
Wittgenstein was wrong if he thought that all metaphysical language games are useless play of words. Some of them may be, others are not, and I leave it for others to decide to which category my games belong.
I only
want to add some metaphysical considerations that I find interesting
and necessary if we want to go deeper to the existential level, the
level of our life and death, so to speak. When Heidegger wrote about
the concept of 'philosophy of life', he said it is a concept like
'botany of plants'. This is what philosophy is for me, and that is
why it goes far beyond science, although it should not, of course,
adopt anything which is against empirical evidence. I have tried to
take care of both logical consistency and empirical validity, but
because I have tried to say something that is very difficult to
express in words, I understand that my point is hard to find, and I
myself sometimes have the feeling that my sentences are absurd. But
their intention is good.
Finally something to think about: I think reality is a community of Leibniz's monads migrating from one to the other as a succession of "nows" in subjective time.
Finally something to think about: I think reality is a community of Leibniz's monads migrating from one to the other as a succession of "nows" in subjective time.
What I
have tried to elaborate in my own way, is trying to solve the paradox
with two opposite self-evident facts, or facts that I see
self-evident: (1) the being of the world is independent of my
personal existence, and all subjects form a symmetric community, (2)
when I die, and if my existence ceases for good, the world also
ceases to exist, and the symmetry between me and others seems to
break.
Let us
have these two sentences:
p: I cease to exist for good.
q: The world ceases to exist, even so that there has never been anything, no world, no me, no others, because also the past disappears.
p->q is true, and I am convinced of its truth. For me it is as self-evident as the Cartesian "I am".
We all know that q is false: the world does not disappear when I die.
Therefore p must also be false, since only a false statement can imply a false statement.
So my death does not mean my non-being, and everyone in our community of subjects can say the same. But this can be the case only if there is a temporal connection between us. This connection is the pure I behind each individual subject, the point of view or presence that migrates through all subjects adopting them as its manifestations on an endless journey.
This is a metaphysical hypothesis, of course, but the paradox that led me to this conclusion is obvious, I think, and I do not see any other possible conclusion.
But this all depends on accepting that p->q is true. And this cannot be proved, it can only be seen or not seen.
p: I cease to exist for good.
q: The world ceases to exist, even so that there has never been anything, no world, no me, no others, because also the past disappears.
p->q is true, and I am convinced of its truth. For me it is as self-evident as the Cartesian "I am".
We all know that q is false: the world does not disappear when I die.
Therefore p must also be false, since only a false statement can imply a false statement.
So my death does not mean my non-being, and everyone in our community of subjects can say the same. But this can be the case only if there is a temporal connection between us. This connection is the pure I behind each individual subject, the point of view or presence that migrates through all subjects adopting them as its manifestations on an endless journey.
This is a metaphysical hypothesis, of course, but the paradox that led me to this conclusion is obvious, I think, and I do not see any other possible conclusion.
But this all depends on accepting that p->q is true. And this cannot be proved, it can only be seen or not seen.
In
ordinary language p->q says: "If I did not exist, there would
be nothing." But it does not say: "If I did not
exist as an individual subject, there would be nothing."
Remember the distinction between me as an individual subject and the
metaphysical I. So I am certain that if I did not exist, there would
be nothing but, on the other hand, I am certain that there is a
material world that is independent of my personal existence. And the
consequence of this is all the metaphysics I have presented.
So the key point is the question if the implication p->q is true. All depends on it, and if someone proves that is not true, I am ready to abandon all my philosophical theories. Fortunately it cannot be proved to be true or false any more than the phrase "I am here now" can be proved to be true or false.
So the key point is the question if the implication p->q is true. All depends on it, and if someone proves that is not true, I am ready to abandon all my philosophical theories. Fortunately it cannot be proved to be true or false any more than the phrase "I am here now" can be proved to be true or false.
According
to materialism reality consists of matter and its properties, and one
of those properties is consciousness. According to ontological
idealism, which is my standpoint, reality is a subject-object
relation. If it were possible to remove the subject, also the object,
i.e. the material world, would vanish. What we are talking about here
is the relation of my personal existence to subjectivity in general,
which is an internal property of reality. In other words, are there
many subjects like the monads of Leibniz, or is there something that
connects all of us to the same stream of experiences.
I start
from evidence and the paradox. The paradox is a paradox
precisely because it goes against facts. And still it is true. And it
is this truth of it I want you to challenge, but you cannot challenge
it by appealing to empirical facts, because the facts are already
written in the paradox. You must somehow see the paradox
differently than I do, to try to imagine your nonexistence. It needs
reflection and a certain kind of insight. Something like Descartes'
sum, 'I am'.
I do
not think there is a scientific solution to the mind-body problem,
because I do not share the materialist view of consciousness as a
property of matter. In fact I see no problem in consciousness,
because it is one member of the subject-object relation and as such
fundamental. Why do scientists think consciousness is a problem, not
matter?
"The world is my world", Wittgenstein says in Tractatus. The world is a world of meanings and instruments. Modern physics holds the view that everything can be reduced to elementary particles and their interactions. It may be so, but those basic elements must be such that they can build structures that make it possible for the awakening subjectivity to experience the world. The world must be rational, and the subject-object relation that is the precondition of all being makes it rational. A world without subjectivity would reduce to nothingness, which is absurd and self-contradictory.
And that is why, if you try to imagine your nonexistence, you do not succeed. You can only imagine something, not nothing. And if you cannot imagine nothing, what sense is there to imagine that there is a world independent and outside of your nothingness? But this is not easy to prove with words if you have never thought it through and had a clear insight of it. It comes if it comes.
"The world is my world", Wittgenstein says in Tractatus. The world is a world of meanings and instruments. Modern physics holds the view that everything can be reduced to elementary particles and their interactions. It may be so, but those basic elements must be such that they can build structures that make it possible for the awakening subjectivity to experience the world. The world must be rational, and the subject-object relation that is the precondition of all being makes it rational. A world without subjectivity would reduce to nothingness, which is absurd and self-contradictory.
And that is why, if you try to imagine your nonexistence, you do not succeed. You can only imagine something, not nothing. And if you cannot imagine nothing, what sense is there to imagine that there is a world independent and outside of your nothingness? But this is not easy to prove with words if you have never thought it through and had a clear insight of it. It comes if it comes.
To
clarify the distinction between the individual I and the
transcendental I:
I can say to someone: “Look, I am here”, and the 'I' means 'I who have this body and these memories and so on'. But I can also ask myself: “Why do I have this body and these memories?” or simply: “Who am I”? Now I look at myself from outside. I transcend myself, and who is speaking now is the transcendental subject. I believe that the transcendental subject is transpersonal: it is the pure I that connects all of us so that there is only one I that migrates through all individual subjects. But the transmigration part of this is a hypothesis, and there are some problems in it that need further thinking, for example the relation of subjective time to physical time.
I can say to someone: “Look, I am here”, and the 'I' means 'I who have this body and these memories and so on'. But I can also ask myself: “Why do I have this body and these memories?” or simply: “Who am I”? Now I look at myself from outside. I transcend myself, and who is speaking now is the transcendental subject. I believe that the transcendental subject is transpersonal: it is the pure I that connects all of us so that there is only one I that migrates through all individual subjects. But the transmigration part of this is a hypothesis, and there are some problems in it that need further thinking, for example the relation of subjective time to physical time.
This is
how I see the mind-body problem:
I exist as an individual subject and I have a relation to other individual subjects. Other subjects exist in exactly the same way as I, but because they are there outside of me, as others, they must be material organisms to be able to have a relation to me. So their bodies are their instruments of being related to me and other individuals. And in the same way I must have a body in order to be related to others. So the material world with all its organisms can be interpreted as an instrument for me and other subjects to be related to each others. What follows from all this is that there is a correlation between consciousness and the material world. When I see someone, something happens in our organisms and the rest of the world between us, some photons hitting my retina and so on. And when I think of something, something happens in my brain, in the rest of my body and in the rest of the material world. So I see with my eyes and think with my brain. My eyes do not see and my brain does not think, as opposed to the standpoint of materialism.
I exist as an individual subject and I have a relation to other individual subjects. Other subjects exist in exactly the same way as I, but because they are there outside of me, as others, they must be material organisms to be able to have a relation to me. So their bodies are their instruments of being related to me and other individuals. And in the same way I must have a body in order to be related to others. So the material world with all its organisms can be interpreted as an instrument for me and other subjects to be related to each others. What follows from all this is that there is a correlation between consciousness and the material world. When I see someone, something happens in our organisms and the rest of the world between us, some photons hitting my retina and so on. And when I think of something, something happens in my brain, in the rest of my body and in the rest of the material world. So I see with my eyes and think with my brain. My eyes do not see and my brain does not think, as opposed to the standpoint of materialism.
The
origin of the basic mistake of materialism seems to be the fact that
everywhere we look, we see only matter, and even the instances of
consciousness we meet seem to be strongly connected to material
organisms. So we make the conclusion that everything, including
consciousness, can in the end be explained and interpreted as
properties of matter. But in this way we forget the totality of
existence: that we are in the world and part of it, but, on the other
hand, conscious of that same world, seeing ourselves as part of it.
Instead of starting from the metaphysical presupposition that only
matter is fundamental we should start from the totality: our being in
the world. In this way the situation becomes a bit more complex on
one hand, but simpler on the other hand, because this way of looking
at things makes it easier to explain many difficult problems,
including the pseudo problem of consciousness. The basic mistake of
materialism is trying to interpret, with no success, what 'we' and
'I' denote as properties of something more fundamental, and not
seeing that they are basic constituents of reality, members of the
irreducible subject-object relation. But there is nothing substantial
in them, they are transcendental.
Some
concrete metaphysical questions:
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Is reality rational? What does irrationality mean?
Is everything necessary or is there something which is contingent? What does contingency mean?
Is there such a thing as chance or genuine probability in nature?
What is the relationship between subjective time and physical space-time?
Does subjective time have a beginning and an end?
Which is more fundamental, matter or subjectivity, or are they interrelated?
What does it mean to have a world with no one experiencing it?
And much more. These are questions that are connected to our very existence and should, I think, concern us at least as much as the empirical questions of physics and biology, the answering of which has been so great success in recent decades.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Is reality rational? What does irrationality mean?
Is everything necessary or is there something which is contingent? What does contingency mean?
Is there such a thing as chance or genuine probability in nature?
What is the relationship between subjective time and physical space-time?
Does subjective time have a beginning and an end?
Which is more fundamental, matter or subjectivity, or are they interrelated?
What does it mean to have a world with no one experiencing it?
And much more. These are questions that are connected to our very existence and should, I think, concern us at least as much as the empirical questions of physics and biology, the answering of which has been so great success in recent decades.
Why
can't objects of consciousness be historical? Why should there be
consciousness in the past of the universe in order for it to be an
object for consciousness? I see the universe as a totality. To say it
metaphorically: a ball is a ball although its segments are not balls.
But it is true that this presupposes teleology and a holistic view of
reality. The expression of this teleology is the fundamental
subject-object relation.
Consciousness
begins when the subject begins, and the subject begins when there is
the present, the basic unit of temporality. The being of the present
means that there is something present for the subject and it is there
at the present moment. Rocks and computers do not have their own
present, all they have is our present. So what defines consciousness
is temporality, and this is what material things do not have, not
even our brains.
We are conscious, i.e. temporal, using our bodies. Our bodies are neither conscious nor temporal. They are located in physical time, but that is not what original temporality means.
We are conscious, i.e. temporal, using our bodies. Our bodies are neither conscious nor temporal. They are located in physical time, but that is not what original temporality means.
To
understand ontology of consciousness and ontology of matter we need
phenomenology. To understand facts of consciousness we need
psychology. To understand facts of the material world we need
physics. To understand the relations between facts of consciousness
and facts of the material world we need brain research.
So there are many levels of understanding. But we should not presuppose the materialistic ontology as a premise and try to explain consciousness from that premise. It has not succeeded so far and, as far as I can see, will not succeed in the future, because the ontology behind those efforts is not satisfactory. We must clarify our ontological standpoint first, by phenomenological studies.
So there are many levels of understanding. But we should not presuppose the materialistic ontology as a premise and try to explain consciousness from that premise. It has not succeeded so far and, as far as I can see, will not succeed in the future, because the ontology behind those efforts is not satisfactory. We must clarify our ontological standpoint first, by phenomenological studies.
If
reality is not rational, i.e. if it has no meaning, this
irrationality is still something we are concerned with, and it does
not necessarily stop our questioning about meaning.
The DNA
molecule, for example, is what it is and therefore behaves as it
behaves. We cannot find any meaning in it. But what makes us ask
about meaning is this: why do elementary particles and their
interactions happen to be such that they can form, and in fact do
form, complex structures like DNA molecules and Markku Tamminen?
Meaning, if any, lies in what there is, not in the properties of what
there is. There are no such properties in the DNA molecule that
suggest any meaning, but the very existence of DNA molecules might be
an expression of some kind of cosmic meaning. It is still an open
question if there is any meaning or rationality in the universe, or
if everything is meaningless an absurd, as e.g. Camus seems to think.
And laws of nature do not make the world any less absurd. Or do they?
To be
honest, I do not quite understand what we mean by God. But there is
the question of rationality vs. irrationality of reality. Because we
are thinking beings, we easily claim some rationality of the universe
which is our home, so to speak. And the view of ontological idealism
could be that this rationality comes from subjectivity, i.e. from us
in a way, although at the cosmic level, so that the universe would be
causa sui, explaining itself from within. This means some kind
of teleology or causa formalis, explaining the world from the
premise of our existence, the 'I am' of Descartes, and not vice
versa, i.e. explaining our existence by reducing it to the basic
components of physics. These kinds of thoughts are not very popular
nowadays, but it should be noted that they are not incompatible with
scientific facts, being only metaphysical interpretations of those
facts. And now we are at the center of the question: "What is
the meaning of life?"
I admit
that a universe which is finite in space-time is difficult to
understand, but so is a universe that is infinite. Here we are
reminded of the antinomies of Kant. For example, how can we be here
if there has always been a real moment of time before each moment of
time? I think the general relativity theory has succeeded to solve
this in a satisfactory way, with its non-euclidean space-time where
space can be finite or infinite, but time is finite in the past. This
is something Winnie the Pooh cannot understand, but it explains
observations, though not all of them. And what comes to the
rationality or meaning of all this, that is another question.
Think of subjective time. You were born. Was there time before that? Maybe, but you don't remember anything of it. Maybe there was nothing, not even time. So it is not impossible to imagine subjective time with a beginning, why not physical time? Another thing is that I cannot imagine the end of time, either subjective or physical. But maybe that is my personal problem.
Think of subjective time. You were born. Was there time before that? Maybe, but you don't remember anything of it. Maybe there was nothing, not even time. So it is not impossible to imagine subjective time with a beginning, why not physical time? Another thing is that I cannot imagine the end of time, either subjective or physical. But maybe that is my personal problem.
On
Being and Otherness:
Being is. Non-being is not. These are tautologies.
So there is being.
Being is being of something.
Being is temporal.
That being is temporal means that there is something now and then there is something now. Being is succession of presents.
There must have been the first present, because if there were a present before each present, there could not be this present.
There cannot be a last present, because that would mean non-being, which would be self-contradictory.
So being is a series of presents with a beginning and no end.
But what is this 'something' of being?
In fact it seems that there cannot be anything, because there seems to be no reason for anything.
Nevertheless, there is something, as we see.
That something which is the content of the present points towards two directions: otherness and the past.
Otherness means the revelation of the subject-object relation. The other is an object and I am a subject. I come to the stage for the first time. But the other is also a subject.
My present is a synthesis of my relations to the other and to my past. As long as the past is involved in the synthesis, I remain the same individual. So memory defines an individual. Death is forgetting.
There is a symmetric relation between me and the other. I am also the other and the other is also I.
My relation to the other is the world. The world is material. The world is the concrete realization of my relation to the other.
There are many others, as we see. And because of the symmetric relation between us the world is in fact my concrete relation to myself.
So I am the others and the others are I. But because I am now I and not an other, the others must be in my past or in my future. This means that we must understand in a new way the relation between subjective time and physical time.
All this means that the ontology of being is a combination of solipsism and transmigration of the self or I.
Now we see the rationality of the 'something'. The world explains itself from within. Being is really nothing but my relation to myself and the 'something' is the tautological 'being is' or 'I am' itself. But the realization of this requires the whole universe with all its structures and evolutionary processes.
If being ever becomes transparent to itself remains an open question. We have always dreamed of an everlasting heaven, paradise or nirvana, but maybe the logic of being does not fulfill our dreams. Perhaps the myth of Sisyphus gives us a more realistic picture of our existential situation.
Nevertheless, all we have is the future.
Being is. Non-being is not. These are tautologies.
So there is being.
Being is being of something.
Being is temporal.
That being is temporal means that there is something now and then there is something now. Being is succession of presents.
There must have been the first present, because if there were a present before each present, there could not be this present.
There cannot be a last present, because that would mean non-being, which would be self-contradictory.
So being is a series of presents with a beginning and no end.
But what is this 'something' of being?
In fact it seems that there cannot be anything, because there seems to be no reason for anything.
Nevertheless, there is something, as we see.
That something which is the content of the present points towards two directions: otherness and the past.
Otherness means the revelation of the subject-object relation. The other is an object and I am a subject. I come to the stage for the first time. But the other is also a subject.
My present is a synthesis of my relations to the other and to my past. As long as the past is involved in the synthesis, I remain the same individual. So memory defines an individual. Death is forgetting.
There is a symmetric relation between me and the other. I am also the other and the other is also I.
My relation to the other is the world. The world is material. The world is the concrete realization of my relation to the other.
There are many others, as we see. And because of the symmetric relation between us the world is in fact my concrete relation to myself.
So I am the others and the others are I. But because I am now I and not an other, the others must be in my past or in my future. This means that we must understand in a new way the relation between subjective time and physical time.
All this means that the ontology of being is a combination of solipsism and transmigration of the self or I.
Now we see the rationality of the 'something'. The world explains itself from within. Being is really nothing but my relation to myself and the 'something' is the tautological 'being is' or 'I am' itself. But the realization of this requires the whole universe with all its structures and evolutionary processes.
If being ever becomes transparent to itself remains an open question. We have always dreamed of an everlasting heaven, paradise or nirvana, but maybe the logic of being does not fulfill our dreams. Perhaps the myth of Sisyphus gives us a more realistic picture of our existential situation.
Nevertheless, all we have is the future.
If a
robot "sees" a yellow wall and we ask it to tell what color
it sees, it will answer: yellow, because that is what it has learned.
But it does not see the yellow wall as yellow, it only receives light
waves of certain length. In fact it really sees nothing, seeing is
not the proper term for what happens.
If we adopt the view that consciousness emerges from matter, it is quite natural to ask if machines can be conscious. But that is not what I think of consciousness: it is a much more fundamental phenomenon.
If we adopt the view that consciousness emerges from matter, it is quite natural to ask if machines can be conscious. But that is not what I think of consciousness: it is a much more fundamental phenomenon.
We can
meaningfully say that we see things as having colors, for example,
because we are conscious subjects, but a robot is an object and
therefore there are only physical processes happening in it. When a
robot says it sees a yellow spot, it is a yellow spot for us, not for
the robot. The robot does not exist in the existential sense.
I don't
think subjects are physical or material although they need material
organisms for their being. Our bodies are not subjects. They are not
conscious, either, in the sense that consciousness would be their
material property. We are conscious but our bodies are not.
A robot
is not a subject, not an I. It does not understand the 'I am' of
Descartes.
Consciousness
is not an elan vital that only humans have. It is something
that is already there, as a possibility in the elementary particles
even at the moment of the big bang. The material organisms that
evolve as time goes on, are its organs or instruments of being. This
is why only natural organisms are conscious. Their bodies are their
instruments of existing, i.e. being conscious. They can extend their
bodies by making hammers, robots etc., but none of these, nor their
bodies, are conscious in themselves. This is what I mean by saying
that the subject-object relation is fundamental, and that a world
without subjectivity is not possible.
We walk with our legs, see with our eyes, think with our brains, hammer with our hammers and use our robots to help us by making them simulate our behavior.
We walk with our legs, see with our eyes, think with our brains, hammer with our hammers and use our robots to help us by making them simulate our behavior.
The
subject-object relation is the subject's relation to the material
universe. Consciousness is the subjective side of this relation and
the body, as part of the material universe, is its objective side. It
is one and the same relation, but there necessarily appears two
conceptually incompatible layers of description, e.g. qualia vs.
brain events. Therefore we have a mind-body correspondence or
parallelism.
I can
make an experiment: always when I see yellow, I observe feature X
among my brain events, and always when I observe feature X among my
brain events I see yellow. Now I can say that seeing yellow is X, and
that is true in a sense. But can you imagine a robot making that
experiment?
All in all, I would say that robots behave and "think" within the rules we have made, whereas we cannot find any fixed rules in us if we do not believe in the rules God has given us when he created us from dust. What motivates a robot? And all conscious beings we know die. What does it mean to say a robot dies?
All in all, I would say that robots behave and "think" within the rules we have made, whereas we cannot find any fixed rules in us if we do not believe in the rules God has given us when he created us from dust. What motivates a robot? And all conscious beings we know die. What does it mean to say a robot dies?
We are
in relation to the material world. When I see a tree, the subjective
component of that relation is the perception, the objective part the
tree, light waves, my brain processes etc. When I think of the tree,
the subjective part is the thought, the objective part the
corresponding brain processes. I think there is really no other
mind-body problem than studying the correlations, i.e. the
parallelism between mental and physical events, because the relation
is one and the same, only the levels of description are ontologically
incompatible.
I am a
dualist in the sense that the subject-object relation is fundamental
and that the subject is not a property of matter but something that
is already there as an ontological precondition of being. Material
objects like our bodies and robots are our instruments of being.
Consciousness is the self-evident 'I am' of Descartes taken
ontologically, not only epistemologically. Therefore I think that
only natural organisms can be conscious.
A
question that would be a genuine "why" question could be
something like: "Why did the Big Bang happen?" where the
answer could be, for instance: "Because we are here." If
the Big Bang did not happen, we would not be here, and we are here
necessarily because the ontological precondition of being, the
Cartesian 'I am' is self-evident. So "why" questions arise
when we make metaphysical interpretations of empirical evidence.
I admit
it is difficult for us to draw a line between conscious organisms and
non-conscious things, but I think it is an on-off situation: there is
consciousness or there is not, because consciousness is essentially
subjectivity, and in my view subjectivity is not a property of
matter. I would say there is consciousness if there is a temporal
present, an elementary unit of subjective time. But it may be
impossible for us to detect if a thing is conscious or not. However,
I suppose the minimum criterion is a natural evolution of the things
that consciousness adopts as its instruments of being. I cannot prove
this, though.
Some
questions may look like non-questions because we lack the horizon for
asking them. The horizon is our general view of reality. For a
materialist questions like "Why did the Big Bang happen?"
or "Why is there anything?" may seem nonsense, but if we
see consciousness as fundamental, the same questions can be seen as
the most concrete and most important of all questions.
Consciousness
is not a substance a´la Descartes, but an original and fundamental
precondition of all being whatsoever. If there is an 'I am' or a
subjective experience constituting subjective time, then there is
consciousness, if not, there is no consciousness. This is an
ontological statement. And note that consciousness can be a
precondition of all being although all being is not conscious.
When I
perceive a particular yellow spot, for instance, the event of
perceiving can be described on the physiological level as brain
processes, but the content of that experience, the particular yellow
spot, is on a fundamentally different conceptual level just because
it is a content. Contents are not processes. Processes produce
contents of consciousness, and these contents are in fact precisely
what we call consciousness, at least how I understand that
concept.
So consciousness and matter are necessarily ontologically separate levels of being, although they may express one and the same relation we have to to the world. What is fundamental is subjectivity, which is the ”point” in the point of view to the world, also called consciousness, that subjectivity adopts by using material organisms for its being. And when I say "using" I use that word metaphorically to describe the basic ontological structure of reality. Concepts like 'using', 'willing' and 'intending' may be expressions of the same structure but come to the picture later on.
So consciousness and matter are necessarily ontologically separate levels of being, although they may express one and the same relation we have to to the world. What is fundamental is subjectivity, which is the ”point” in the point of view to the world, also called consciousness, that subjectivity adopts by using material organisms for its being. And when I say "using" I use that word metaphorically to describe the basic ontological structure of reality. Concepts like 'using', 'willing' and 'intending' may be expressions of the same structure but come to the picture later on.
The
fact that contents of consciousness are on a conceptually different
level than brain events has nothing to do with the question of how
the brain processes information: digitally or analogically. The
levels are conceptually incompatible. We cannot even meaningfully
speak about the analog/digital difference in the case of
consciousness.
On the ontological structure of reality: I think we can speak of teleology or final causes when we speak of cosmology, but the words 'intention', 'purpose', 'will', 'motivation' etc. should be reserved to describe individuals.
On the ontological structure of reality: I think we can speak of teleology or final causes when we speak of cosmology, but the words 'intention', 'purpose', 'will', 'motivation' etc. should be reserved to describe individuals.
The
being of consciousness needs no explanation, because consciousness is
the ontological precondition of all questions and explanations. The
being of matter needs explaining, because its rationality is not as
self-evident as the rationality of consciousness. So we need not ask
"Why is there consciousness?", but we should ask "Why
is there matter?" and "Why is the material universe exactly
such as it is?" Empirical science cannot answer these kinds of
questions, so they are left for reflective science, i.e. philosophy.
Physics, for instance, can make unbelievably accurate predictions in
the world of elementary particles using the equations of the Standard
Model, and it has good reason to be proud of its achievements, but it
has not the faintest idea about why the elementary particles are such
as they are and what their basic properties mean: what is spin, what
is electric charge, what is time? But it is not its business to think
about these questions if there is no empirical solution to
them.
This is what I mean by an alternate horizon of seeing things. It is totally different from the materialistic horizon and produces different kinds of questions and answers. However, it leaves sciences where they are, if they do not adopt metaphysical presuppositions, for instance the presupposition that consciousness is a property of matter, because that only leads to confusion and endless debates of non-existent problems.
This is what I mean by an alternate horizon of seeing things. It is totally different from the materialistic horizon and produces different kinds of questions and answers. However, it leaves sciences where they are, if they do not adopt metaphysical presuppositions, for instance the presupposition that consciousness is a property of matter, because that only leads to confusion and endless debates of non-existent problems.
If we
can read others' thoughts in the future, which I doubt, this will
happen through our brains, but we will not find them in
our brains, because they are not there. Our language is full of these
misleading metaphors: 'heart' means feeling, 'head' means thinking
etc.
There
is definitely a parallelism between mind and body, so in this sense
both are complex phenomena, but the reason for the being of
consciousness is self-evident, because it is the realization of
subjectivity itself, the relation of the 'metaphysical subject', or
the Cartesian 'I am' to the material world. The self-evidence of the
being of this I is as clear to me as it was to Descartes, and this
must indeed be interpreted ontologically. In this sense I am an
ontological idealist.
As I have said, I see the subject-object relation fundamental and unbreakable. Secondly, I think that the subject is a not an emergent property of matter, nor is consciousness. And finally, the subject is more fundamental in the subject-object relation, being the clue of all reality.
As I have said, I see the subject-object relation fundamental and unbreakable. Secondly, I think that the subject is a not an emergent property of matter, nor is consciousness. And finally, the subject is more fundamental in the subject-object relation, being the clue of all reality.
I would
put it this way: The being of the material world depends on the being
of subjectivity, but subjectivity is in relation to the world, and
therefore there must be the subjective side and the objective side of
that relation, just because the world is material and the subject, or
consciousness of the world, is not material. So there are mind-body
correlations, two conceptually incompatible levels of description in
our relation to the world.
There cannot be a world without subjectivity, but subjectivity must "find" the world. We call this scientific progress.
There cannot be a world without subjectivity, but subjectivity must "find" the world. We call this scientific progress.
Consciousness
can be referred to. We find it in reflection a´la Descartes and in
seeing that there are other conscious subjects. I myself have tried
to define it by saying that it is the temporal present of subjective
time, but that is more like trying to describe the key structures of
consciousness rather than defining it by other than itself. Heidegger
described the ontological structure of Dasein using
expressions like temporality and "worldhood", but he never
tried to define consciousness, because he understood its fundamental
nature.
If
death means the end of being, there is non-being, which is
self-contradictory. The problem is, of course, if the premise is as
self-evident as I see it is.
The
premise is: "If death means the end of being, there is
non-being."
This is self-contradictory if by "non-being" we mean nothingness. I have noticed that there are not many who see this "axiom" as self-evident as I do.
This is self-contradictory if by "non-being" we mean nothingness. I have noticed that there are not many who see this "axiom" as self-evident as I do.
What I
am saying is that there can be a world that is independent of my
personal existence only if I exist as a universal and eternal
subject, i.e. if all of us are manifestations of one and the same
subjectivity.
All I
am saying depends on one axiom of existence: "If I did not
exist, there would be nothing." I keep wondering if anyone can
imagine one's own nonexistence, truly. Others', yes, but mine? And
still there is the world after my death: a paradox that can be
resolved only by seeing that my existence is eternal, and so is
everybody's.
This is pure logic, but only on the condition that the axiom above can be seen as self-evident, which seems to be difficult for most people for some reason. But admittedly it was a remarkable insight for me, too.
This is pure logic, but only on the condition that the axiom above can be seen as self-evident, which seems to be difficult for most people for some reason. But admittedly it was a remarkable insight for me, too.
The
subjective past is problematic in the sense that it seems to be
finite although we cannot remember when it began, but the subjective
future is endless at least as I see it, because else there would be
absolute non-being, and that is self-contradictory.
I see
the subjective past necessarily finite and the subjective future
necessarily endless. I do not speak of my personal past or personal
future here. Why the past must be finite needs some reasoning.
The
mind is the realization of the subject's relationship with the
material world and therefore has in itself nothing to do with matter.
Subjectivity is the fundamental and irreducible "reference
point" of reality. And because the subject has a relation to the
material world, the mind and the body are the two sides of this
relationship. So there is one relation and two ways of describing
this relation, and therefore the mind and the body are identical in
their functions but totally different in the description of those
functions. That is why there is no "hard problem" with the
mind-body relationship, only the scientific problem of finding the
correlations between them.
Being
is succession of presents. If there were a present preceding each
present, I could not be here now. If there were the last present,
there would be non-being. Therefore both a past with no beginning and
a future with an end are self-contradictory. So being is succession
of presents with a beginning and no end.
'I' can
denote an individual with this body and these memories, but it can
also denote subjectivity in general. And because subjectivity cannot
be eliminated from the structure of reality, "I am" means
essentially the same as "being is". They are both
tautologies, expressing one and the same self-evidence.
So we should note the difference between 'I' as an individual and 'I' as the experiencer.
So we should note the difference between 'I' as an individual and 'I' as the experiencer.
I am
using the word 'mind' here in a very general sense, as a synonym for
'consciousness'. It contains all modes of subjectivity, including the
mind of an ant and the mind of a scientist, for instance; everything
that participates in subjective temporality.
The subjective content of this experiencing is not material, because a content cannot be material. But because this subjective experiencing is realized by a material organism, there must be a material counterpart for each content. This is my hypothesis.
So an event, like thinking, has a content and the corresponding brain event, and they are the same thing described on different conceptual levels.
The subjective content of this experiencing is not material, because a content cannot be material. But because this subjective experiencing is realized by a material organism, there must be a material counterpart for each content. This is my hypothesis.
So an event, like thinking, has a content and the corresponding brain event, and they are the same thing described on different conceptual levels.
I can
make an experiment: always when I see yellow, I observe feature X
among my brain events, and always when I observe feature X among my
brain events I see yellow. Now I can say that seeing yellow is X,
i.e. it is one event, described as "seeing yellow" or "X".
These two ways of describing the event go parallel, neither of them
is an explanation of the other. And my hypothesis is that every
feature of consciousness has this material counterpart which can be
described on the physiological level. I see no other mind-body
problem.
We
cannot reduce the mind to material processes, because I think the
mind, or consciousness, or subjectivity, is fundamental and the key
for all being whatsoever. It only "needs" the material
organism for its being.
We can
say that the subject is "thrown into the world" and has
therefore a relation to the world. Because the world is material, the
relation is also material, consisting of the material organism we
call the body. But because the subject is not material, the very same
relation is also a relation of meanings, intentions etc., a relation
we call the mind.
I think
we make the same mistake as Descartes did when he thought that the
'I' is the same as the soul and the soul is some kind of substance.
He reified the mind. When we try to catch the mind, we see nothing
there, only the 'I am' in reflection, and thoughts, feelings,
memories, dreams etc. But that is all there is, there is nothing
behind them. We try to make the Münchhausen's trick if we seek some
peculiar substance behind what we see already. The mind is not
substance, it is our way of being in the world. We can study the mind
phenomenologically and make interesting observations, but we cannot
explain it from outside, because there is no outside.
It is
not easy to convince anybody that AI has no mind, but here is another
attempt:
Why are there living organisms? Because they are conscious, like us. If they were not conscious, there would be no reason for their being. We can say that a living organism is created by consciousness as an instrument for its being. This is what evolution really means: it is evolution of consciousness.
Robots are also created by consciousness: our consciousness. We create them as extensions of our bodies, to improve our brain capacities etc. We are the only reason for their being.
Why are there living organisms? Because they are conscious, like us. If they were not conscious, there would be no reason for their being. We can say that a living organism is created by consciousness as an instrument for its being. This is what evolution really means: it is evolution of consciousness.
Robots are also created by consciousness: our consciousness. We create them as extensions of our bodies, to improve our brain capacities etc. We are the only reason for their being.
By
consciousness I mean all kinds of subjective experience. The
definition has been under discussion, but that is not the point. I
believe that evolution is a process dealing with subjective
experiences and their development. Therefore natural living organisms
are evolving towards consciousness if they are not conscious already.
And consciousness is the key to understanding living organisms, the
rationality of their being. And as I said, I think material organisms
are instruments for the being of consciousness.
Our brains do not think. Our robots do not think, because they are extensions of our brains. We think with our brains, and if they are too small, we can always use our extensions.
Our brains do not think. Our robots do not think, because they are extensions of our brains. We think with our brains, and if they are too small, we can always use our extensions.
I see
the question of whether a computer can be conscious as a question of
subjective experiences, not a question if a computer can have an
awareness of self. Of course there are various degrees of
consciousness, but what is common to them is some kind of subjective
experience. That is what I meant when I said that they are "like
us". And I do not know if bacteria, flowers or mushrooms have
even a primitive kind of consciousness, but then, neither has a human
embryo at its early stages, and still it becomes conscious. We should
look at the whole: the ecosystem and the universe. The rocks and some
living organisms are not conscious, but the universal subjectivity
that manifests itself as various forms of consciousness guarantees
that the universe is not totally irrational. So there is some kind of
teleology in the universe, and this principle of subjectivity is
connected to various forms of living organisms, which are or are not
conscious as is needed by subjectivity itself to make its being
possible in the form of various kinds of conscious beings. So
consciousness evolves naturally, according to the logic of its
development, and material organisms as well as artificial products
are its instruments of realizing its being.
So there is a lot of metaphysical interpretation in this scenario, but I cannot make any simple argument against machine-minds. I think the qualia argument is a good one, but it does not seem to be convincing enough. On the other hand, perhaps no argument is.
So there is a lot of metaphysical interpretation in this scenario, but I cannot make any simple argument against machine-minds. I think the qualia argument is a good one, but it does not seem to be convincing enough. On the other hand, perhaps no argument is.
I think
that a bacterium is in some kind of pre-conscious phase of evolution,
not yet conscious, a bit like an embryo. Computers have nothing to do
with consciousness, even primitive, because they are our instruments
like our brains. Consciousness is an on-off phenomenon: it is or is
not, because it is the basic element of subjective time. Where the
line between conscious and non-conscious is in nature, I cannot
say.
To be poetic: consciousness seeks a home and it does not find it in rocks or robots. Or better: it builds its own home.
To be poetic: consciousness seeks a home and it does not find it in rocks or robots. Or better: it builds its own home.
Consciousness
is consciousness of objects in the material world. Our bodies belong
to the material world. Therefore consciousness cannot be a property
of our bodies.
The subject-object relation is fundamental. If there were no material world, there would be nothing. If there were no subject, there would be nothing.
Therefore a short definition of consciousness is as follows: Consciousness is the subjective side of the subject-object relation.
Our bodies are its objective side.
By the way: there is no conceptual bridge between our minds and bodies.
The subject-object relation is fundamental. If there were no material world, there would be nothing. If there were no subject, there would be nothing.
Therefore a short definition of consciousness is as follows: Consciousness is the subjective side of the subject-object relation.
Our bodies are its objective side.
By the way: there is no conceptual bridge between our minds and bodies.
The
presupposition of materialism seems to be that consciousness is a
property of matter. I think it is the organizing principle of matter.
It is not a substance different from matter, rather it is a
perspective to the world, where the subject uses matter for its
being. The subject-object relation is fundamental. We cannot get rid
of the subject.
Consciousness is something spontaneous, it evolves naturally, using matter as its instrument.
All this said, I cannot prove that this kind of organism, although it seems to require natural evolution, cannot in principle be made by us. I doubt it though.
Consciousness is something spontaneous, it evolves naturally, using matter as its instrument.
All this said, I cannot prove that this kind of organism, although it seems to require natural evolution, cannot in principle be made by us. I doubt it though.
It
seems that there are two questions under discussion: (1) is it
possible for a computer to be a subject? (2) is it possible for a
computer to be aware of itself? If we can answer the first question,
the second one cannot be very difficult to answer.
Perhaps
the only cause and reason for the being of the universe is
consciousness. Let us compare it with the being of an individual
human person. When it is an embryo in the early stages of its
development, it is not conscious, but then it becomes conscious. It
is a spatio-temporal totality with consciousness as its essence. The
universe can be seen in the same way: it was born with the big bang
and evolved towards consciousness, which is its essence. This way of
seeing things has a remarkable advantage: because consciousness is
the precondition of all being, we do not need to seek causes for the
being of the universe or the being of consciousness. The universe
explains itself from within, being a self-evident causa sui.
All this is based on the insight that subjectivity needs no
explanation.
But consciousness, as well as the universe, begins from absolute zero. Why not?
But consciousness, as well as the universe, begins from absolute zero. Why not?
Spinoza
says the body is the object of the mind and that mind and body are
two attributes of one and the same substance, Nature. I also think
that the subject-object relation is one relation with two sides or
points of view to it. So there is no extra substance called 'soul' or
any "thing" called 'I'. But because I think subjectivity is
the more fundamental part of the subject-object relation, I could
perhaps define myself as an ontological idealist, if a definition is
needed.
If my
body will be copied to make two exact copies of myself, and so that
also my individual subject would be exactly the same in both copies,
there would still be one difference: I will be one of the copies,
continuing my life as that copy, and the other copy is another
subject for me. My being that copy and not the other is the only
difference. And that difference is something that goes beyond
science, as far as we can see. This leads our thoughts to otherness
in general.
What I
think, and what is my interpretation of Spinoza as well, goes roughly
as follows:
When I see a tree, there are two parallel and conceptually incompatible levels of describing the event:
1. My perception of the tree
2. The tree itself, light waves hitting my retina, my brain processes etc.
Those two levels have no causal relations with each other. Causation goes from the tree through light waves to my brain. And all this is "expressed" as my seeing the tree.
When I see a tree, there are two parallel and conceptually incompatible levels of describing the event:
1. My perception of the tree
2. The tree itself, light waves hitting my retina, my brain processes etc.
Those two levels have no causal relations with each other. Causation goes from the tree through light waves to my brain. And all this is "expressed" as my seeing the tree.
I would
say consciousness was already there at the big bang as a
potentiality, and the universe is the instrument for its growing to
actuality.
I
cannot imagine a universe without consciousness, because I think the
subject-object relation is fundamental and we cannot get rid of the
subject when we think about reality. This does not mean, of course,
that there has always been consciousness in the universe, so I do not
stand for panpsychism, but in the same way as an embryo is not yet
conscious but will be, the universe can be seen as a totality or an
organism with consciousness as its rational cause of being. How far
consciousness can evolve is another question, Hegel thought it can
become a self-conscious universe, the Absolute thinking of itself or
being transparent to itself.
Notice that I do not say there are some other kinds of consciousness than our individual consciousnesses, for example some kind of collective consciousness or even a transcendent consciousness, God for instance.
The basic elements of matter, as modern physics describes them, must have such properties that the being of consciousness becomes possible, otherwise there would not be consciousness. This is a tautological statement that reductionist physics can accept, and so can I. And, as Feynman says, everything that is possible in physics, happens. But my ontological interpretation of that reductionist principle is different from that of materialism: as I said, everything happens in accordance with the rationality that consciousness guarantees. For materialist science the being of consciousness would not be necessary, and a universe with no subjectivity would be as possible as a universe with subjects, but I think that is an absurd thought. For if the subject is removed from the subject-object relation, also the object vanishes.
Notice that I do not say there are some other kinds of consciousness than our individual consciousnesses, for example some kind of collective consciousness or even a transcendent consciousness, God for instance.
The basic elements of matter, as modern physics describes them, must have such properties that the being of consciousness becomes possible, otherwise there would not be consciousness. This is a tautological statement that reductionist physics can accept, and so can I. And, as Feynman says, everything that is possible in physics, happens. But my ontological interpretation of that reductionist principle is different from that of materialism: as I said, everything happens in accordance with the rationality that consciousness guarantees. For materialist science the being of consciousness would not be necessary, and a universe with no subjectivity would be as possible as a universe with subjects, but I think that is an absurd thought. For if the subject is removed from the subject-object relation, also the object vanishes.
Perhaps
consciousness evolves by some kind of trial and error principle.
Perhaps there has been many failures already, in other planets. And
because there happens to be a success here, we are here to witness
it. We do not know the logic of consciousness, yet.
About
the "concepts" of 'I' and 'we': it cannot be so that if
Earth were not inhabited, I would not exist and we would not exist. I
exist and we exist where there is consciousness.
I would
say that living organisms can fail to be conscious, but there is only
one universe, so it cannot fail. Inside of the universe there can be
trials and errors, but the universe itself cannot be a trial. Except
if we think about a multiverse.
I think
consciousness is the key if we want to understand the universe and
reality in general. The universe can be seen as an instrument for
consciousness to realize itself. Consciousness is immanent, I do not
believe in transcendence.
I think
that there must be the subject, but it is not a property of matter. I
see it as a kind of organizing principle that regulates our existence
in the material world by uniting our ideas in the flow of events we
call life. It needs the material organism for its being, but it does
not emerge from matter. It also need not be any kind of substance, it
is transcendental. It is something that is common to us, and our
individual consciousnesses are its manifestations. Besides being
simple, this idea has the advantage that the transcendental subject
can be detected in reflection, as e.g. the cogito of
Descartes, whereas the substantial subject, if there is such a thing,
cannot be found by any method.
Who is
I?
There are many I's in the universe, and I am one of them.
If the only I's in the universe were I's of rats, would it mean that I would not be in the universe? That I would not exist?
No. I would be one of those rats.
And a universe without I's is inconceivable.
But what is the relation between the I that I am and the I's that I am not, i.e. the other I's in the universe?
There are many I's in the universe, and I am one of them.
If the only I's in the universe were I's of rats, would it mean that I would not be in the universe? That I would not exist?
No. I would be one of those rats.
And a universe without I's is inconceivable.
But what is the relation between the I that I am and the I's that I am not, i.e. the other I's in the universe?
I think
that evolution is essentially evolution of consciousness. But because
consciousness needs a material basis, we have our bodies to make our
being possible. Our bodies, including brains, are our instruments for
being, and we make other instruments, like computers, to improve our
mental capacities. So our bodies, brains and computers are not
conscious, and science cannot find consciousness in our brains or
computers. Science finds consciousness in our behavior as we
understand each other, and consciousness is already presupposed in
our understanding. This science is called psychology. Neuroscience
only finds correlates of consciousness.
'I'
denotes the subject of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories,
dreams, fantasies etc. It is the reference point of all experiences,
expressing the fact that they are my experiences here and now.
'I' can denote the subject of my personal experiences, defining me as
'Markku Tamminen', but it can also denote the universal subject that
happens to have just these experiences here and now, whatever
individual subject is having them. This is the absolute I in the
sense that it is the precondition of all being, one of the
unremovable members of the subject-object relation, making the world
essentially my world, to use Wittgenstein's phrase.
There
are those who think that the subject is indeed something
"thing-like", emerging from matter, whereas I think it is
essentially more fundamental and has nothing to do with matter,
except that it needs the material world for its being. It is the
non-substantial point of view to the world, the origin of
consciousness. Consciousness is my consciousness of the
world.
Wittgenstein writes in his Notebooks that there are two divinities, the world of facts and the metaphysical, point-like subject that does not belong to the world.
Wittgenstein writes in his Notebooks that there are two divinities, the world of facts and the metaphysical, point-like subject that does not belong to the world.
You are
not me, so it seems. Your experiences are your own, I am not having
them here and now, they are absent. So there seems to be a violation
of symmetry here.
When the bubble that I am vanishes, what is left? Other bubbles. But what are those other bubbles? If there is symmetry between all bubbles, I must be another bubble after vanishing.
So, if there is something after my death, I cannot vanish.
Those old Eastern thinkers were not stupid.
When the bubble that I am vanishes, what is left? Other bubbles. But what are those other bubbles? If there is symmetry between all bubbles, I must be another bubble after vanishing.
So, if there is something after my death, I cannot vanish.
Those old Eastern thinkers were not stupid.
Let me
return to my favorite syllogism.
1. If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
2. There is something, obviously.
3. Therefore my nonexistence is impossible.
Now sentence 2 is obviously true. The conclusion, sentence 3, is pure logic. What is left is sentence 1. Its truth can be questioned and even denied straightforward, but for me it is self-evident. I admit that it demands some kind of an insight to become convinced of its truth, and it may be one of those clear ideas that are almost impossible to translate into words, although the structure of the sentence is so simple. It is possible that if one has not had that insight, the only way to see the truth of it is to only wait and hope that the insight comes.
So simple. So revolutionary. The Copernican revolution of Kant completed?
1. If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
2. There is something, obviously.
3. Therefore my nonexistence is impossible.
Now sentence 2 is obviously true. The conclusion, sentence 3, is pure logic. What is left is sentence 1. Its truth can be questioned and even denied straightforward, but for me it is self-evident. I admit that it demands some kind of an insight to become convinced of its truth, and it may be one of those clear ideas that are almost impossible to translate into words, although the structure of the sentence is so simple. It is possible that if one has not had that insight, the only way to see the truth of it is to only wait and hope that the insight comes.
So simple. So revolutionary. The Copernican revolution of Kant completed?
I would
define language as a tool for communication. So we must have
something to communicate: thoughts and other experiential phenomena.
We express our thoughts with language. Even if our thoughts are made
for communication in the first place, there must still be the
sequence of thought and its expression. How this all happens is a
scientific question, not philosophical. But all this depends, of
course, on how we define language. There has been a need to separate
the concepts of thought and language, though.
The structures of thought and the structures of language are similar, but this is just because language expresses our thoughts.
I can remember a thought structure without words. I would not say this is language.
Also I would say that thoughts have meaning and language expresses that meaning, if we define the concepts in the way I suggested.
The structures of thought and the structures of language are similar, but this is just because language expresses our thoughts.
I can remember a thought structure without words. I would not say this is language.
Also I would say that thoughts have meaning and language expresses that meaning, if we define the concepts in the way I suggested.
In fact
the "syllogism" should go like this:
1. If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
2. There is something, also after my death.
3. Therefore my nonexistence is impossible, also after my death.
What I say in sentence 1 has nothing to do with the material universe. It is a phenomenological statement, expressing something immediately obvious, at least for me. And it must be noted that it says something about being in general, not only about my personal existence.
To better understand what I am trying to say, we should see the relation between being and time. Time is a basic property of being, as space-time in the material world, and as subjective time in our immediate reality. This means that being does not depend on time, so that now there would be being and then there would not. On the contrary, time depends on being.
And this is true in a way: I am the universe in the sense that the subject-object relation is fundamental. Without the subject there can be no universe.
1. If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
2. There is something, also after my death.
3. Therefore my nonexistence is impossible, also after my death.
What I say in sentence 1 has nothing to do with the material universe. It is a phenomenological statement, expressing something immediately obvious, at least for me. And it must be noted that it says something about being in general, not only about my personal existence.
To better understand what I am trying to say, we should see the relation between being and time. Time is a basic property of being, as space-time in the material world, and as subjective time in our immediate reality. This means that being does not depend on time, so that now there would be being and then there would not. On the contrary, time depends on being.
And this is true in a way: I am the universe in the sense that the subject-object relation is fundamental. Without the subject there can be no universe.
I share
the idea of the universal consciousness, but we cannot escape
temporality. We can be conscious of the universe only through one
bubble at a time, and when that bubble pops, there must be a
transition to another bubble. The old Eastern thinkers called it
transmigration.
'We' is
a word we use in our everyday communication with each other, and it
is necessary as such. But in deeper sight we are successive
manifestations of one and the same 'I'. This is my hypothesis.
The I
is the universal, non-substantial precondition of all being. It is
not part of the world. It is like a reference point from which the
world is seen and experienced. The mind is my mind,
constituting my consciousness of the world. The body is my
body. My body cannot experience anything. Only I can
experience, with the help of my body. My mind, or consciousness, is
the subjective side of my relation to the world, and my body is its
objective side, being on the same ontological level as the material
world. My mind and my body are conceptually incompatible, although
they are factually the same thing seen from different angles.
But there is no spiritual substance.
But there is no spiritual substance.
"If
I did not exist, there would be nothing."
What I tried to say was that the existence of the material universe is put into "brackets", a common method in phenomenology. Then a question is asked: "What is the state of the material universe if I do not exist?" And the answer is: "It does not exist, either." So we ignore the obvious fact that the material universe will exist even after my death. We are in front of a paradox, and the solution of the paradox is this: "My nonexistence is impossible, also after my death." Therefore we must make a distinction between the empirical subject and the transcendental subject. The empirical, individual subject, 'Markku Tamminen', will vanish away, but the transcendental, metaphysical, absolute subject is eternal. And all individuals are manifestations of this absolute subject. It migrates through all of us.
This is a hypothesis, of course.
What I tried to say was that the existence of the material universe is put into "brackets", a common method in phenomenology. Then a question is asked: "What is the state of the material universe if I do not exist?" And the answer is: "It does not exist, either." So we ignore the obvious fact that the material universe will exist even after my death. We are in front of a paradox, and the solution of the paradox is this: "My nonexistence is impossible, also after my death." Therefore we must make a distinction between the empirical subject and the transcendental subject. The empirical, individual subject, 'Markku Tamminen', will vanish away, but the transcendental, metaphysical, absolute subject is eternal. And all individuals are manifestations of this absolute subject. It migrates through all of us.
This is a hypothesis, of course.
I am
here and now, but this here and now flows through all the bubbles. It
cannot be everywhere at the same time, even though it can
possibly be conscious of everything at the same time, if you are
enlightened.
Being and time cannot be separated.
Being and time cannot be separated.
I can
look into my brain and see what happens there as I look into my
brain, and I can see my eye as I look into my brain. I can see the
physiological correlate of my looking into my brain. But I cannot see
me. That is why the 'I' is transcendental. It is not an observable
entity. An eye does not see. I see.
A knife
is not an observer or experiencer. It is a tool with no
subjectivity.
I am an experiencer and you are an experiencer. How do I know that you are an experiencer? Because we communicate with each other and I understand you more or less. But one thing is lacking: I cannot see your experiences in the way you are having them. They are not observable entities. Only you can observe them in reflection. And therefore you are not an observable entity as an experiencer, only as a physiological organism that behaves like me and whose subjectivity is already presupposed in the fact that I understand you. So if you say that you are an experiencing thing, I must say that I appreciate you much more than you appreciate yourself.
I am an experiencer and you are an experiencer. How do I know that you are an experiencer? Because we communicate with each other and I understand you more or less. But one thing is lacking: I cannot see your experiences in the way you are having them. They are not observable entities. Only you can observe them in reflection. And therefore you are not an observable entity as an experiencer, only as a physiological organism that behaves like me and whose subjectivity is already presupposed in the fact that I understand you. So if you say that you are an experiencing thing, I must say that I appreciate you much more than you appreciate yourself.
By
'transcendental' I mean something that is the precondition of the
being of entities, something that is not itself an entity. But it is
not abstract. It is me, or us, concretely.
I am
here and now, still and unmoved, but the bubbles come and go through
me. But I can lose myself in the bubbles, lose my enlightened state
and live my life as a rat, for instance. But that does not matter,
does it? I only have the fate that Reality can offer me.
What is
reality? Is it what physics describes? No. It is our being in the
world that physics describes, and our being conscious of the very
same world. We are objects and subjects at the same time. But we are
objects as Others, and the subjectivity of Others is hidden but
presupposed in our communicating with and understanding each other.
Our consciousness of the world, and the subject that is conscious of
the world, cannot be explained by physics or reduced to the world of
physics. That is why the subject is transcendental. It is not a
thing. It is the precondition of the being of things.
Münchhausen told that he had lifted himself from his hair, but he was a liar. That is why the subject is transcendental.
Münchhausen told that he had lifted himself from his hair, but he was a liar. That is why the subject is transcendental.
The
subject is conscious of objects. This is the ontological structure of
reality. The being of the subject depends on the being of objects and
the being of objects depends on the being of the subject.
The totality of objects is the universe.
The being of the subject manifests itself as the being of individual subjects. The being of the universe does not depend on the being of any particular individual subject. From an individual subject's point of view objects are noumena, “things-in-themselves”.
Modern science is interested in objects. Philosophy is interested in reality as a whole. Philosophy is reflective.
The being of the subject and its consciousness of objects cannot be explained by objects of consciousness. On the contrary, the being of the universe can be explained by the being of the subject and its necessary internal structure.
To try to explain the being of the subject and the being of consciousness by properties of matter is like trying to explain the idea of knife by the physical properties of the blade of the knife.
The universe is like a home for us. Its objects are its furniture. As Heidegger said, objects are not “present-at-hand”, they are “ready-to-hand”, they are instruments of our being.
The being of the subject does not need an explanation. It is already presupposed. We only have to understand its internal structure. For that purpose we need philosophical and scientific methods like observation, logic, dialectic and phenomenology. In short: reflective thinking.
The totality of objects is the universe.
The being of the subject manifests itself as the being of individual subjects. The being of the universe does not depend on the being of any particular individual subject. From an individual subject's point of view objects are noumena, “things-in-themselves”.
Modern science is interested in objects. Philosophy is interested in reality as a whole. Philosophy is reflective.
The being of the subject and its consciousness of objects cannot be explained by objects of consciousness. On the contrary, the being of the universe can be explained by the being of the subject and its necessary internal structure.
To try to explain the being of the subject and the being of consciousness by properties of matter is like trying to explain the idea of knife by the physical properties of the blade of the knife.
The universe is like a home for us. Its objects are its furniture. As Heidegger said, objects are not “present-at-hand”, they are “ready-to-hand”, they are instruments of our being.
The being of the subject does not need an explanation. It is already presupposed. We only have to understand its internal structure. For that purpose we need philosophical and scientific methods like observation, logic, dialectic and phenomenology. In short: reflective thinking.
I would
say that a quark, a vacuum, and the universe as a whole, as I define
it, are clearly "things", they are objects for the subject
and possible to describe with the language of physics. A thought is
part of my relation to objects, so it is not a "thing". But
a thought is an object of reflection, as the subject observes its own
relation to the world. The subject can also be detected in
reflection, as Descartes, for instance, found in his famous cogito.
But the subject is not anything that can be described with the
language of physics or with the language of psychology. That is what
I mean by saying that it is transcendental. The subject is not an
object. There is nothing "thing-like" in it. It is the
ontological precondition of the being of all things and my relation
to things.
We must
make a distinction between objects of the world and objects of
consciousness. When I see a tree, the tree is an object of the world,
and my perception of the tree is an object of consciousness. When I
reflect my relation to the world, for instance my perception of a
tree, those relational elements become objects for the I, the
transcendental subject. But the I is neither an object of the world
nor an object of consciousness. It is something point-like, similar
to what Wittgenstein spoke of in Tractatus. We can speak of
objects of the world with the language of physics, we can speak of
objects of consciousness with the language of psychology, but we can
only refer to the transcendental subject with the language of
philosophy. Even Descartes, after his famous insight of the being of
cogito made the mistake of starting to speak of the soul as
some kind of spiritual substance.
The
word 'object' can certainly have many meanings, but what is essential
is the subject-object relation that constitutes the basic ontological
structure of reality. Words are words, but we must see the basic
facts behind words, and define our words according to those facts.
An
object of the world is some kind of a thing or stuff, but the
transcendental subject is not stuff of any kind. This was the mistake
of Descartes, too. Therefore it is clear that an object of the
universe and the subject are radically different, because the being
of the subject is an ontological precondition for the being of
objects.
Naturalism
says that there is no transcendent reality, only nature and its laws,
and science explains everything by those laws. But in fact nature is
transcendent, as opposed to immanence, and science describes the way
it appears to us. And it does an excellent job. But science makes a
fatal mistake if it tries to explain immanence, for instance
consciousness, by transcendence, by the laws of nature, and even
reduce everything to physics. This is a Münchhausen's trick and only
leads to paradoxes and futile efforts.
Philosophy cannot start with nature, because that would mean a metaphysical commitment before starting. Philosophy starts with our immediate reality, seeking its ontological preconditions.
The terms 'transcendental' and 'transcendent' both express transcending our immediate experiences, 'transcendental' towards their subjective precondition and 'transcendent' towards objects “out there”. So ontologically they are opposites, and we should not confuse them.
The being of the transcendent world, or nature, and the transcendental Subject are the ontological preconditions of our immediate reality, our existence.
Being is. Non-being is not. These are tautologies.
So there is being.
The Subject is the Absolute. It is being itself. And non-being is not. So the Subject is causa sui, its being does not need an explanation. The Subject is very concrete: it is me, and it is each of us, at the moment of experiencing. It is what connects our individual beings so as to make one eternal stream of being. It is the point of reference to everything there is. It is transcendental, with no physical or psychological properties.
The Subject has an inner structure, and that structure can be known a priori. It is not easy, though. It is the task of philosophy. Science can help in the task, but does not lead us very far. That is because science is only interested in objects of the material world or objects of consciousness. The analysis of the Subject demands reflection, a phenomenological study of our being in the universe.
The basic components in the structure of the Subject are (1) time and (2) the Others.
Being is temporal.
Being is being of something.
The Subject is temporal. This means that I have now this experience and then another experience. There must have been the first experience, because if there were an experience before each experience, I could not be here now, in fact there could be no “now”. There cannot be the last experience, because that would mean that there would be non-being, which is absurd. So the Subject, or being, has had a beginning but will not have an end. This is the temporal structure of the Subject.
Time is not a continuum with sparkles of being here and there, so that now I exist and then I do not exist. There is no time outside of being, outside of the Subject. No being without time, no time without being.
That there cannot be an end of my existence, can be proved as follows:
1. If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
2. There is something, also after my death.
3. Therefore my nonexistence is impossible, also after my death.
As to the first premise: the existence of the world is put into "brackets", which is a common method in phenomenology. Then a question is asked: "What would be the state of the world if I did not exist?" And the answer is: "It would not exist, either." This is the key point. So in the first premise we ignore the obvious fact that the world will exist also after my death, which is expressed in the second premise. We are in front of a paradox, and the solution of the paradox is the conclusion attained in sentence 3 of the syllogism. Therefore we must make a distinction between the empirical subject and the transcendental Subject. The empirical, individual subject will vanish away, but the transcendental, metaphysical, absolute Subject is eternal. And all individual subjects are manifestations of this absolute Subject. It migrates through all of us.
The reader who does not see the truth of premise 1 may stop here, because in that case the rest of the story makes no sense. Premise 1 is an a priori truth, like the Cartesian cogito. Premise 2 is an empirical truth. The conclusion is pure logic.
But what is this “something” of being? In fact it seems that there cannot be anything, because there seems to be no reason for the being of anything.
Nevertheless, there is something, as we see.
Every experience has a content. A content can point at two directions: to a noumenon, a “thing-in-itself”, and to an earlier experience. The totality of noumena is the universe. A reference to an earlier experience is memory. Memory defines an individual subject. The Subject manifests itself as individual subjects. Death is forgetting: when the content of my present experience does not have any reference to any earlier experience, I am dead as one individual, being now another individual.
The being of the universe does not depend on the being of any particular individual subject. However, the being of the universe depends on the being of the Subject, and the being of the Subject depends on the being of the universe. There can be no universe without a point of view, the temporal present, the “here and now”. So the universe belongs to the inner structure of the Subject. The Subject is the reason for the being of the universe. And it is possible that all the details of the universe are predetermined by the inner logic of the Subject, although we will probably never fully understand that logic, in spite of the fact that everything in the universe happens for us. For we are the Subject. But is the Subject transparent to itself? Can it be? Perhaps transparency is the telos of the universe, never attained, the origin of the eternity of our being.
The universe is inhabited. It is the universe of Others. Others are individual subjects, like me. My being is being in relation to Others. There is a symmetric relation between me and the Others: I am also an Other and every Other is also I. My relation to Others is the universe. And because of the symmetric relation between me and the Others the universe is in fact my concrete relation to myself. This relation is material, because Others, having a spatial relation to me, must necessarily have the concreteness that shows itself as matter. In fact matter can be defined as the medium of my relation to Others. Matter is not the ontological basis for our existence, but is necessary for its concrete realization. Therefore Others, like me, must have bodies and minds. My mind is the subjective side of my relation to Others, and my body is its objective side, being on the same ontological level as the bodies of Others and the rest of the material universe. So mental and bodily events run parallel, being two conceptually incompatible levels of description of one and the same relation. Therefore trying to solve the so called mind-body problem by finding a conceptual bridge between matter and consciousness will never succeed, because there is no such bridge. There are only correlations between mind and body, and it is the task of science, not philosophy, to find them. There is no philosophical mind-body problem.
So I am the Others and the Others are I. But because I am now I and not an Other, the Others must be in my past or in my future. This means that we must understand in a new way the relation between subjective time and physical time, because my present, past and future can be simultaneous in physical time. This is a difficult problem, but there is no logical contradiction in it. It only means that everything must be strictly predetermined if I can meet my past and future in the world. But who is in my past and who is in my future? Or what? Probably we will never fully understand the logic of the Absolute, even in principle, because we are inevitably inside the universe, and we cannot jump outside of it to see what it looks like.
Because the being of the universe of Others is necessary for the being of the Subject, my death is inevitable for my transition to another individual subject.
All this means that the ontology of the Subject is a combination of solipsism and a modified theory of transmigration of the Self or I, a combination that removes the logical inconsistencies of both theories. All experiences are my experiences. There are no foreign experiences. The present, the “here and now”, wanders through reality adopting all the manifestations of the Subject in the form of individual subjects, successively, each at its proper time, being born, living and dying, eternally.
Now we see the rationality of the “something”. Being explains itself from within. Being is really nothing but my relation to myself and the “something” is the tautological “being is” or “I am”. The Subject has to understand itself, find itself, be transparent to itself, in order to be in balance with itself, because there is nothing else, and there must be something to guarantee its being. And it must be, because non-being is not. Therefore it has to be in relation to itself, being its own object, as mind and body, seeking the balance of being. But the realization of this requires the whole universe with all its structures and evolutionary processes. This is the essence of the idea that the universe is inhabited, the universe of Others. And this is also the spatial structure of the Subject, seen as I and the Others in the universe.
So the Subject is temporal and spatial: eternal as subjective time, and migrating through all individual subjects in the space-time of the universe.
Now we can define being as the Subject's relation to itself, realized by nature. And nature is nothing more than the universe that modern physics so brilliantly describes. So there is nothing mystical in all this: only an ontological interpretation of known facts.
The idea behind the metaphysical hypothesis that I am also the Others is very clear but so embarrassing that I have hesitated to present it to anybody. However, if the hypothesis is true, it resolves many existential paradoxes, including the paradox of death and the paradox of foreign minds, as shown above. It is also a solid basis for ethics. Unfortunately the only way to verify or falsify the hypothesis is to think clearly.
Whether being ever becomes transparent to itself, gaining balance and peace in understanding itself, remains an open question. We have always dreamed of an everlasting heaven, paradise or nirvana, but maybe the logic of being does not fulfill our dreams, especially as death is unavoidable. Perhaps the myth of Sisyphus gives us a more realistic picture of our existential situation. Climbing up and falling down, never reaching the top. Or reaching it, understanding everything, and then forgetting all, having to start from zero. Or perhaps the balance is in the seeking, and we are like birds sleeping in the wind. Who knows.
Whatever our fate will be, all we have is the future. Here and now.
Philosophy cannot start with nature, because that would mean a metaphysical commitment before starting. Philosophy starts with our immediate reality, seeking its ontological preconditions.
The terms 'transcendental' and 'transcendent' both express transcending our immediate experiences, 'transcendental' towards their subjective precondition and 'transcendent' towards objects “out there”. So ontologically they are opposites, and we should not confuse them.
The being of the transcendent world, or nature, and the transcendental Subject are the ontological preconditions of our immediate reality, our existence.
Being is. Non-being is not. These are tautologies.
So there is being.
The Subject is the Absolute. It is being itself. And non-being is not. So the Subject is causa sui, its being does not need an explanation. The Subject is very concrete: it is me, and it is each of us, at the moment of experiencing. It is what connects our individual beings so as to make one eternal stream of being. It is the point of reference to everything there is. It is transcendental, with no physical or psychological properties.
The Subject has an inner structure, and that structure can be known a priori. It is not easy, though. It is the task of philosophy. Science can help in the task, but does not lead us very far. That is because science is only interested in objects of the material world or objects of consciousness. The analysis of the Subject demands reflection, a phenomenological study of our being in the universe.
The basic components in the structure of the Subject are (1) time and (2) the Others.
Being is temporal.
Being is being of something.
The Subject is temporal. This means that I have now this experience and then another experience. There must have been the first experience, because if there were an experience before each experience, I could not be here now, in fact there could be no “now”. There cannot be the last experience, because that would mean that there would be non-being, which is absurd. So the Subject, or being, has had a beginning but will not have an end. This is the temporal structure of the Subject.
Time is not a continuum with sparkles of being here and there, so that now I exist and then I do not exist. There is no time outside of being, outside of the Subject. No being without time, no time without being.
That there cannot be an end of my existence, can be proved as follows:
1. If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
2. There is something, also after my death.
3. Therefore my nonexistence is impossible, also after my death.
As to the first premise: the existence of the world is put into "brackets", which is a common method in phenomenology. Then a question is asked: "What would be the state of the world if I did not exist?" And the answer is: "It would not exist, either." This is the key point. So in the first premise we ignore the obvious fact that the world will exist also after my death, which is expressed in the second premise. We are in front of a paradox, and the solution of the paradox is the conclusion attained in sentence 3 of the syllogism. Therefore we must make a distinction between the empirical subject and the transcendental Subject. The empirical, individual subject will vanish away, but the transcendental, metaphysical, absolute Subject is eternal. And all individual subjects are manifestations of this absolute Subject. It migrates through all of us.
The reader who does not see the truth of premise 1 may stop here, because in that case the rest of the story makes no sense. Premise 1 is an a priori truth, like the Cartesian cogito. Premise 2 is an empirical truth. The conclusion is pure logic.
But what is this “something” of being? In fact it seems that there cannot be anything, because there seems to be no reason for the being of anything.
Nevertheless, there is something, as we see.
Every experience has a content. A content can point at two directions: to a noumenon, a “thing-in-itself”, and to an earlier experience. The totality of noumena is the universe. A reference to an earlier experience is memory. Memory defines an individual subject. The Subject manifests itself as individual subjects. Death is forgetting: when the content of my present experience does not have any reference to any earlier experience, I am dead as one individual, being now another individual.
The being of the universe does not depend on the being of any particular individual subject. However, the being of the universe depends on the being of the Subject, and the being of the Subject depends on the being of the universe. There can be no universe without a point of view, the temporal present, the “here and now”. So the universe belongs to the inner structure of the Subject. The Subject is the reason for the being of the universe. And it is possible that all the details of the universe are predetermined by the inner logic of the Subject, although we will probably never fully understand that logic, in spite of the fact that everything in the universe happens for us. For we are the Subject. But is the Subject transparent to itself? Can it be? Perhaps transparency is the telos of the universe, never attained, the origin of the eternity of our being.
The universe is inhabited. It is the universe of Others. Others are individual subjects, like me. My being is being in relation to Others. There is a symmetric relation between me and the Others: I am also an Other and every Other is also I. My relation to Others is the universe. And because of the symmetric relation between me and the Others the universe is in fact my concrete relation to myself. This relation is material, because Others, having a spatial relation to me, must necessarily have the concreteness that shows itself as matter. In fact matter can be defined as the medium of my relation to Others. Matter is not the ontological basis for our existence, but is necessary for its concrete realization. Therefore Others, like me, must have bodies and minds. My mind is the subjective side of my relation to Others, and my body is its objective side, being on the same ontological level as the bodies of Others and the rest of the material universe. So mental and bodily events run parallel, being two conceptually incompatible levels of description of one and the same relation. Therefore trying to solve the so called mind-body problem by finding a conceptual bridge between matter and consciousness will never succeed, because there is no such bridge. There are only correlations between mind and body, and it is the task of science, not philosophy, to find them. There is no philosophical mind-body problem.
So I am the Others and the Others are I. But because I am now I and not an Other, the Others must be in my past or in my future. This means that we must understand in a new way the relation between subjective time and physical time, because my present, past and future can be simultaneous in physical time. This is a difficult problem, but there is no logical contradiction in it. It only means that everything must be strictly predetermined if I can meet my past and future in the world. But who is in my past and who is in my future? Or what? Probably we will never fully understand the logic of the Absolute, even in principle, because we are inevitably inside the universe, and we cannot jump outside of it to see what it looks like.
Because the being of the universe of Others is necessary for the being of the Subject, my death is inevitable for my transition to another individual subject.
All this means that the ontology of the Subject is a combination of solipsism and a modified theory of transmigration of the Self or I, a combination that removes the logical inconsistencies of both theories. All experiences are my experiences. There are no foreign experiences. The present, the “here and now”, wanders through reality adopting all the manifestations of the Subject in the form of individual subjects, successively, each at its proper time, being born, living and dying, eternally.
Now we see the rationality of the “something”. Being explains itself from within. Being is really nothing but my relation to myself and the “something” is the tautological “being is” or “I am”. The Subject has to understand itself, find itself, be transparent to itself, in order to be in balance with itself, because there is nothing else, and there must be something to guarantee its being. And it must be, because non-being is not. Therefore it has to be in relation to itself, being its own object, as mind and body, seeking the balance of being. But the realization of this requires the whole universe with all its structures and evolutionary processes. This is the essence of the idea that the universe is inhabited, the universe of Others. And this is also the spatial structure of the Subject, seen as I and the Others in the universe.
So the Subject is temporal and spatial: eternal as subjective time, and migrating through all individual subjects in the space-time of the universe.
Now we can define being as the Subject's relation to itself, realized by nature. And nature is nothing more than the universe that modern physics so brilliantly describes. So there is nothing mystical in all this: only an ontological interpretation of known facts.
The idea behind the metaphysical hypothesis that I am also the Others is very clear but so embarrassing that I have hesitated to present it to anybody. However, if the hypothesis is true, it resolves many existential paradoxes, including the paradox of death and the paradox of foreign minds, as shown above. It is also a solid basis for ethics. Unfortunately the only way to verify or falsify the hypothesis is to think clearly.
Whether being ever becomes transparent to itself, gaining balance and peace in understanding itself, remains an open question. We have always dreamed of an everlasting heaven, paradise or nirvana, but maybe the logic of being does not fulfill our dreams, especially as death is unavoidable. Perhaps the myth of Sisyphus gives us a more realistic picture of our existential situation. Climbing up and falling down, never reaching the top. Or reaching it, understanding everything, and then forgetting all, having to start from zero. Or perhaps the balance is in the seeking, and we are like birds sleeping in the wind. Who knows.
Whatever our fate will be, all we have is the future. Here and now.
As I
wrote, premise 1 is not an empirical statement, nor is it something
that can be proved in logic. It is an a priori statement,
totally independent of the obvious fact that others are still there
after my death. You only need to see its truth, as Descartes saw the
truth of his 'I am'. So it is, unfortunately. And the conclusion
solves the paradox inherent in it.
I do
not deny the obvious fact that my death does not make the world
nonexistent. I only claim that this fact has logical consequences.
Would you say that the Cartesian 'I am' is not an obvious a priori
truth? My premise 1 is something like that, perhaps a bit more
difficult to see, as it seems, but very clear and obvious when you
see it. And this has nothing to do with religion.
The
being of the world depends on the being of the transcendental
subject, and therefore my non-being coincides with the
non-being of everything. But my non-being is impossible, and that
saves the world from vanishing when I die. My premise 1 proves that
there must be the transcendental subject.
Descartes
did not really conclude anything, he detected the transcendental
subject. But he draw the false conclusion that there is a substance
he called res cogitans. There is no such thing, only pure
subjectivity with no properties, a point of view to the world. And
this is the insight that inspired Husserl and others to develop the
phenomenological method in philosophy.
Empirical
science tries to make a coherent picture of how nature appears to us.
Philosophy tries to make a coherent picture of the appearing itself,
as it appears to us in reflection. So philosophy is a reflective
science. Empirical science studies the world, philosophy studies our
being in the world.
There
has been discussion about the possibility of there being a universe
without subjects, without a single 'I'. What can be said of such a
universe? Nothing, because there would be no one to say anything. But
we can say something of it, namely that such a universe can
exist, can't we? Yes, but that would be an abstraction of a universe.
Every concrete possible universe must have a reference point for
which it is a universe. In this sense the being of the world and
experiencing the world depend on each other. Being and knowing are
not so separate phenomena as we often think nowadays. This is one
meaning of the concept of transcendental subject. Without it
everything melts into nothingness and absurdity. Why should we assume
that there can be something self-contradictory?
I remember that more than once someone said it is very easy to imagine a universe without subjects. But I think in this case 'easy' means 'superficial'.
I remember that more than once someone said it is very easy to imagine a universe without subjects. But I think in this case 'easy' means 'superficial'.
Whenever
I say: “A universe without subjects is possible”, I deny what I
say. But I can say: “If I did not exist, and if there were no other
subjects either, the universe could still exist.” But to say this I
must exist, and therefore the sentence is pure nonsense. We have no
meaningful way of saying that a universe without subjects is
possible. Therefore it is not possible. The universe is our universe,
and we cannot leave it to its own absurd existence even if we wanted
to.
What I
am saying is something similar to the metaphysical subject of
Tractatus and what I have called the transcendental subject,
borrowing that concept from well-known sources. So I am not speaking
about an empirical, individual subject, but claiming that there must
be some kind of a reference point in order for there to be a world at
all. It is true that I have pushed the concept of the metaphysical
'I' somewhat further than Kant, Husserl and Wittgenstein, up to the
premise that says "If I did not exist, there would be nothing".
But anyway, it is not a question of my personal being that makes the
world nonexistent, no one can seriously think that way. Instead, I
see the transcendental subject as a precondition not only of knowing
but also of all being whatsoever. It is an ontological concept.
Let us
take the sentence "The being of the world is independent of my
being", which seems to be true and obvious: the world is "out
there", independent of my being. But out of what? Independent of
what? My being, of course, and the being of each of us. So these
phrases express a relation, and one member of the relation is my
being. If we remove that part from the relation, nothing is left. Now
we come to the sentence "If I did not exist, there would be
nothing", which is the clue for all these considerations. These
are much more than word games, they reveal something essential in our
reality.
So now we have proved the sentence "If I did not exist..." formally, using a kind of dialectic, but in fact it can be seen a priori and very clearly, in a phenomenological intuition, if you think of it thoroughly and not just in an everyday manner.
So now we have proved the sentence "If I did not exist..." formally, using a kind of dialectic, but in fact it can be seen a priori and very clearly, in a phenomenological intuition, if you think of it thoroughly and not just in an everyday manner.
Now we all know that when others die, the world does not end, nor does it end when I die. So we must conclude that dying does not mean nothingness, not even my nothingness. Therefore we must conclude that the subject is something deeper than my individual subject, it is transcendental. And what is important, the transcendental subject is transpersonal: it only manifests itself as individual subjects. Only in this way the world remains when I die. The subject-object relation is fundamental. Wherever there is being, there is a subject for which that being is.
Let us consider the monads of Leibniz. They are "soul-like", he says. Let us assume that they are individual subjects. A monad expresses all other monads. If one monad is removed, the world continues its being as before, but it is always there from the point of view of some monad.
So can you really imagine a universe without subjects?
I did
not say: "If others do not exist, nothing exists", or "If
I as an individual subject do not exist, nothing exists". These
are empirical statements, and anyone can see that they are false. I
said "If I did not exist, there would be nothing", and this
does not mean that when I die there will be nothing. This is an a
priori statement, seemingly in conflict with facts but its truth
can be seen very clearly though not perhaps very easily. And the
conclusion is what I have presented. So if you can read elementary
logic, the syllogism goes like this: (1) p->q (2) not q (3) not p,
where (3) is the conclusion. The controversy is about (1), and it
seems that the question about its truth must be left open, because it
requires the kind of insight that cannot be pushed into anyone's mind
with words.
I think
sometimes we have nothing but those clear ideas that Spinoza, for
instance, appealed to as adequate sources of knowledge. Then the
problem is how we can make someone else think in the same way. As we
know, this was the case also for Wittgenstein who wrote in the
preface of Tractatus that his thoughts can probably be
understood only by someone who has had same kind of thoughts.
My language is more like descriptive than precise. So I find no problem in writing of 'universes without subjects', 'essential properties of reality' etc. I only hope the message will be understood so that someone starts to think of things from the same horizon as I do, for a moment at least. To see things in a different way. To express thoughts in philosophy is always a problem, and someone has said that philosophical discussion is impossible because we speak of different things. Our horizons of thinking are so different.
My language is more like descriptive than precise. So I find no problem in writing of 'universes without subjects', 'essential properties of reality' etc. I only hope the message will be understood so that someone starts to think of things from the same horizon as I do, for a moment at least. To see things in a different way. To express thoughts in philosophy is always a problem, and someone has said that philosophical discussion is impossible because we speak of different things. Our horizons of thinking are so different.
Wittgenstein
wrote that in dying the world does not change but ceases. It sort of
vanishes as a whole. And this is exactly what I mean by the sentence
"If I did not exist, there would be nothing". The world
will very concretely pass into nothingness. And this contradicts the
empirical fact that when others die and when I, as an individual,
die, the world does not end or vanish. This is why we need a deeper
idea of the subject. I also find a deeper idea in the nothingness
that follows my nonexistence than mere silence and refusing to speak
about the unspeakable. But I understand that most people do not see
it in the way I do, because they have not had the concrete insight
behind my thinking.
I have
never understood why there should be features in our existence that
language is incapable of expressing. Language is very rich and
contains infinite possibilities of expanding into new territories.
Wittgenstein spoke of the unspeakable in Tractatus and we
understand what he meant, more or less. He did not want to use
metaphysical language games in his later writings. Why? Heidegger
wrote somewhat poetically in Being and Time and even more
poetically in What is Metaphysics, and studied questions like
“Why is there something rather than nothing”, giving a very
poetic definition of nothingness. But all in all, I think there are
existential paradoxes, like death and foreign minds, that are worth
giving a phenomenological “sight”, because they are concrete
questions with concrete answers if we look at them close enough. Our
understanding evolves through hermeneutic spirals, and what now seems
impossible to speak about, may be clear to everybody some day.
Language can be an instrument of understanding and seeing, not only
of describing facts. Scientific language is not the only way of using
language.
Heidegger's
project in Being and Time was to find the meaning of being. He
started with the analysis of the meaning of the being of Dasein
(“being here” or “being there”) and left open the question if
there are other kinds of being and if there is a meaning of being in
general. After going deeper in the analysis, ending with the meaning
of Dasein as temporality, he asked if the meaning of being in
general could be found in temporality, time interpreted as the
phenomenological idea of “subjective” time, from which physical
time can be constructed as a secondary phenomenon. So it seems to me
that he concluded that the meaning of being in general is essentially
the same as the meaning of the being of Dasein, or at least
founded on that. I am not sure if my interpretation is correct or
even near to correct, but it is something similar to what I think
myself. There are questions left open with this interpretation, such
as the subjectivity of animals and what is its relation to the
meaning of the being of Dasein as it is described by
Heidegger, which probably cannot be applied to the being of
animals.
My interpretation is that the objects of the world are "ready-to-hand" and that Heidegger abandoned the "present-at-hand" nature of them altogether, but I may be wrong in this. For objects to be "present-at-hand" we must take a peculiar attitude towards them, sort of stare at them, which was the problem also with Wittgenstein in Tractatus, and which he later confessed to have been his mistake.
My interpretation is that the objects of the world are "ready-to-hand" and that Heidegger abandoned the "present-at-hand" nature of them altogether, but I may be wrong in this. For objects to be "present-at-hand" we must take a peculiar attitude towards them, sort of stare at them, which was the problem also with Wittgenstein in Tractatus, and which he later confessed to have been his mistake.
The
point is that we cannot know what will happen to us, because knowing
and doing are incompatible. Therefore, if something like determinism
were a meaningful concept, there has to be some kind of a
metaphysical reason to use it. I am not sure if it is totally
meaningless.
Wittgenstein's
lecture on ethics is interesting. I am not sure if I can fully agree
with him when he says that ethics cannot be expressed with words. As
I have said, there are many ways of using language, and many of us
has spoken about the ”unspeakable”. Why not be a bit poetic
sometimes? Why not say that our existence is paradoxical? Or that it
is a great wonder that there is a world around us? If they convey
some change of attitude in us, why should we not use those
”nonsensical” phrases. Poetry has its own kind of truth.
What is
that God anyway? We have carried that concept with us thousands of
years having no clear idea of what we are talking about. But the word
means something, and something very important, just because we have
had it as long as we can see into our history. It is the unspeakable
meaning of our existence, something we are dependent on. We cannot
get a grip of God any more than we can get a grip of death. So God,
if we want to use that concept, is the unspeakable depth of our
existence. For Spinoza it was Nature. For Wittgenstein it was the
world of facts and the metaphysical subject, so he had two gods. For
our generation it may be the universe with its laws. So why not God,
we only have to get rid of the dogmas of our religions.
God, if
we use that concept, is not something that exists or something that
does not exist. God, seen as above, is beyond all proofs. Faith in
such a God can be illustrated by quoting Kafka, who wrote that "even
if one crow can easily cover the sky, that is not a proof against the
sky". Cf. the holocaust.
Consciousness
is fundamental, i.e. it comes ontologically, or should we say
”logically”, first, but not, of course, physically, in the
space-time of the universe. This needs no concept of God to support
it.
Our
immediate reality, immanence, or consciousness, is such that it has
always a relation to transcendence, objects "out there",
but we can never say what those objects are like. We can make good
and exact descriptions of them, like modern physics with its
amazingly accurate theories, but nevertheless they are just
descriptions of how objects appear to us. So it is true that in this
sense it is meaningless to speak of the nature of objects as they are
"in themselves". But if there were no objects, we would not
exist either. And if we did not exist, there would be no objects. So
the subject-object relation is ontologically fundamental.
Being
ontologically fundamental has nothing to do with time. We should see
the universe as a totality with consciousness or subjectivity being
its essential and unremovable element.
“How
do I prove my existence?” If put this way the question contains the
answer. No proof is needed. My existence is already presupposed.
But I can ask if it is possible for me to exist or not to exist. In other words: am I some kind of a thing with properties, so that when those properties are removed I cease to exist? And if that “thing” did not exist, I did not exist.
And indeed, I as an individual subject with this body and these memories, will cease to exist, and it is easy to imagine that I with these properties were not born at all. This is what we call the empirical subject.
But instead of thinking of myself as a bundle of properties it is possible to think of myself as the subject of those properties, and that I could as well be the subject of other properties, being another individual. This is the transcendental subject, or at least my version of it. I think it is transpersonal, point-like, with no internal properties.
But I can ask if it is possible for me to exist or not to exist. In other words: am I some kind of a thing with properties, so that when those properties are removed I cease to exist? And if that “thing” did not exist, I did not exist.
And indeed, I as an individual subject with this body and these memories, will cease to exist, and it is easy to imagine that I with these properties were not born at all. This is what we call the empirical subject.
But instead of thinking of myself as a bundle of properties it is possible to think of myself as the subject of those properties, and that I could as well be the subject of other properties, being another individual. This is the transcendental subject, or at least my version of it. I think it is transpersonal, point-like, with no internal properties.
I think
there is no "thinker" or subject which is a "thing"
or substance. The identity of an individual subject is an interesting
question, and I think it is connected with memory. But I also think
that there must be a point-like transcendental subject with no
properties, a universal self that connects all individual subjects to
a common stream of being. It is much like the metaphysical I of
Wittgenstein's Tractatus, although I have made more
far-reaching metaphysical conclusions from its necessity.
I think
philosophy must start with immanence, not transcendence. Nature is
transcendent, and what nature is, philosophically, can only be found
out by a phenomenological analysis of our being in the world. This
analysis reveals much more than the empirical world that science is
interested in. Science cannot deal with our subjectivity, it is not
within its realm of study. That is why we need philosophy.
'I'
denotes both an empirical subject and the transcendental subject, and
we usually confuse those two.
The
idea of my version of the transcendental subject is that the present
moment which I am experiencing just now and which is constantly
changing to another experience has had a long history of experiential
events and will have an endless future of them. And we are all part
of that history. So there is no repetition of the same events. I must
admit that this may seem paradoxical and surely leads to many
oddities, and in the end is something that is impossible to express
with language. In fact if you want to understand what I mean, you
should put language into "brackets" and only think about
your own existence: where you came from, where you will go after your
death and so on. You should forget the world around you. Then it is
perhaps possible, in favorable circumstances, to get some deep
insights that changes your way of seeing the world. But it is beyond
language, beyond all this what I am trying to explain. Like
Wittgenstein's ”ladder” this text is only a way of trying to lead
to a new way of seeing the world and especially our existence in
relation to the world and at the same time as part of the world.
And why
is this all beyond language? Because when we write to each other, we
are supposed to be two separate subjects, and we cannot get rid of
that situation. That we are both part of the same stream of existence
cannot be expressed in our writing to each other, in spite of my
trying to do so now. Paradoxical?
In my
being in the world I meet things like water and, if I am a physicist,
hydrogen and oxygen atoms, and I can see the connection between them.
This is pure physics.
But as an individual subject who can say 'I am...' I also meet other individual subjects who can say 'I am...' and it is only by saying 'I am...' that the other is a subject for me. So the situation is totally different from the case of water and its atoms. The other is a subject whose subjectivity is absent for me. I cannot see the other's subjectivity, I only know he/she is a subject because we have a common language. And there is no conceptual bridge between the other as a subject and the brain events of the other, any more than there is a bridge between my experiences and my brain events. There are only correlations between the other's words and what happens in his/her brain.
That the other is absent as an other means that subjectivity is essentially private, and this privacy means that it is in principle impossible to explain contents of experience or qualia by brain events. In fact the concept of 'content' alone should prove its impossibility.
But as an individual subject who can say 'I am...' I also meet other individual subjects who can say 'I am...' and it is only by saying 'I am...' that the other is a subject for me. So the situation is totally different from the case of water and its atoms. The other is a subject whose subjectivity is absent for me. I cannot see the other's subjectivity, I only know he/she is a subject because we have a common language. And there is no conceptual bridge between the other as a subject and the brain events of the other, any more than there is a bridge between my experiences and my brain events. There are only correlations between the other's words and what happens in his/her brain.
That the other is absent as an other means that subjectivity is essentially private, and this privacy means that it is in principle impossible to explain contents of experience or qualia by brain events. In fact the concept of 'content' alone should prove its impossibility.
There
are correlations or relations of correspondence between consciousness
and brain events. The correspondence may be one-to-one, but contents
of consciousness are not the same as brain events. They are what
constitutes our relation to the material world. They are the immanent
part of that relation, whereas brain events are its transcendent,
material part. Spinoza was not far from truth when he said that the
body is the object of the mind.
The
content of consciousness has a basis in brain events, but the subject
is there already, as if waiting for something to happen, and the
metaphor of a point that Leibniz and Wittgenstein used is a good one.
The subject only uses a body as its instrument of being. We are not
our bodies.
I would
say that consciousness is already there at the big bang as a
potential that actualizes itself during the evolution of cosmos and
life. The material universe realizes that evolution, because it needs
a concrete basis. But the primus motor of everything is
subjectivity or consciousness which has to become a real being and
which is the reason and meaning of the being of the universe. Without
it everything would be absurd, if it were possible to be anything at
all in such a case. So the basic structure of reality is the
subject-object relation, and if the subject were removed, also the
object would vanish, and with it everything. So reality is not a
monistic field of matter but a relation: our relation to the world or
our being in the world in the way Heidegger saw it.
Of
course there were no actual conscious beings at the big bang, only a
potential for them. But the potentiality of them is fundamental and
is the reason for the existence of the universe.
I do
not see subjects as material entities. When I say that the potential
for consciousness has been there since the big bang I mean that the
potential for the being of subjects of consciousness has been there
since the big bang, so that the principle of subjectivity has always
been there. By 'the subject' I meant subjectivity, the potential for
there being individual subjects.
I have
said many times that I do not see consciousness as any kind of
substance or substrate. Consciousness is the immanent side of the
relation of the subject to the material world, and therefore it is on
a different ontological level than the body, but it is not a
spiritual stuff of any kind. In fact, because of the correlation
between body and mind, they can also be thought of as the same thing
seen from two different perspectives, so that they are two
conceptually incompatible levels of description of the same relation.
If we say that our brain creates our consciousness, it is true in the
sense that the material world is the basis for its being, but there
is no conceptual bridge between the two. Immanence and transcendence
can never be on the same level of description. Consciousness is close
to us ontologically, it is our immediate reality, whereas our brain
is part of the transcendent world. Our brains, our bodies and the
rest of the material universe are objects of consciousness,
and consciousness cannot be explained by its objects. Consciousness
is fundamental although it needs the whole material universe for its
being.
There
are causal relations both ways, and dependencies, or an identity of
body and mind, but it is an identity of a relation which is
fundamental, the relation of the subject to the material universe.
And that relation has two sides, the subjective side which we call
consciousness, and the objective or material side which we call the
body, and those two sides speak totally different languages. And the
subject is the key for all this. Without it everything would vanish
away. The universe is there for the subject.
I am
experiencing the universe, directly or indirectly, and without my
being in the universe there is no universe. Even the big bang has
been there because I am now experiencing something that has a
spatio-temporal connection to it. And when I die, there will be
others to experience the universe. My personal non-being does not
change the situation which constitutes the basic structure of
reality: the subject-object relation. The subject is always there
already, wherever it happens to be concretely. As I said, without it
everything would vanish away. I do not see why this seems to be so
difficult to understand. For me it is self-evident.
What
physicalism in fact claims is that everything is transcendent. For
that is what physics is all about: it tries to describe in a
logically consistent way how transcendent reality, the material
world, appears to us. And it does a good job in doing that. But
physics, as well as physicalism, forgets to ask what transcendence
is. It forgets that transcendence is transcendence only in relation
to immanence, our immediate reality, subjectivity, or consciousness.
Physicalism makes the fatal mistake of trying to explain subjectivity
by the objects of that very same subjectivity. This is a
Münchhausen's trick, trying to lift oneself by one's own hair.
Nobody believed him, but some of us still believe in physicalism. It
is a metaphysical belief, a blind commitment to an ontological
position that works well in physics, biology and even neuroscience,
which are its own territory, but fails totally if it tries to extend
itself to psychology or analysis of subjectivity and consciousness as
they immediately present themselves in us.
What is ontologically closest to us makes us often blind.
What is ontologically closest to us makes us often blind.
I am
not a subjective idealist. I am saying that the being of subjects
depends on the being of the material universe, and the being of the
material universe depends on the being of subjectivity - but not on
the being of any individual subject of course, only on the being of
whatever experiencing subjects that bring the rationality and meaning
of being with them. I do not believe in an absurd universe,
especially as it is evident that such a universe cannot exist. An
uninhabited universe is self-contradictory when you think of it
thoroughly. As I said, looking close is sometimes very
difficult.
Another point: if science one day detects consciousness in our brains, how can it claim it is consciousness that it has found? Consciousness is private by definition! This is also valid concerning the question of possible consciousness in robots. The only way the existence of consciousness can be verified in an organism or computer is through the common language we have or certain features of behavior, but never looking into our brains or the algorithms of our computers.
Another point: if science one day detects consciousness in our brains, how can it claim it is consciousness that it has found? Consciousness is private by definition! This is also valid concerning the question of possible consciousness in robots. The only way the existence of consciousness can be verified in an organism or computer is through the common language we have or certain features of behavior, but never looking into our brains or the algorithms of our computers.
A
thought experiment:
Imagine you are observing your brain. You see what happens in your brain as you are looking at it. You see the neurological correlates of your seeing your brain. But if physicalism is true, what you should in fact see there is the content of seeing, your perception of your brain. But of course you cannot see it, not even a delayed version of it. That would be absurd. You are it, at the moment it is experienced. Now we see the relation of mind and brain and the impossibility of applying physicalism to consciousness.
Imagine you are observing your brain. You see what happens in your brain as you are looking at it. You see the neurological correlates of your seeing your brain. But if physicalism is true, what you should in fact see there is the content of seeing, your perception of your brain. But of course you cannot see it, not even a delayed version of it. That would be absurd. You are it, at the moment it is experienced. Now we see the relation of mind and brain and the impossibility of applying physicalism to consciousness.
Consciousness
is consciousness of transcendent, material objects. This is
the basic structure of our being in the world. And we cannot break
this structure, look at it from outside and try to explain
consciousness of objects by the objects themselves. We are not
gods.
Material objects, the Kantian noumena, need explaining, but consciousness of those objects, our immediate reality, cannot and need not be explained. Transcendence needs explanation, immanence needs phenomenological analysis. This is what Husserl so clearly saw.
Material objects, the Kantian noumena, need explaining, but consciousness of those objects, our immediate reality, cannot and need not be explained. Transcendence needs explanation, immanence needs phenomenological analysis. This is what Husserl so clearly saw.
There
is a parallelism between mind and brain a´la Spinoza, but for him
they were different attributes of the same substance, not explainable
one by the other. If science tries to find an explaining bridge
between them it will certainly fail. It is like trying to save
physicalism by building "epicycles" between physics and
psychology. The truth is much simpler: there is no scientific problem
with consciousness.
If I
watch my brain in action, I have a perception of my brain in action.
I also have a perception of my perception of my brain in action as I
reflect my watching. Now physicalistic neuroscience tries to build a
conceptual, explaining bridge between the objects of those two
perceptions. I see this as very odd and complicated thinking, and
condemned to fail because it is based on a false ontology that only
leads to logical inconsistencies and absurdities. Immanence cannot be
explained by transcendence. It is as simple as that.
My view
is based on the rejection of a metaphysical dogma called materialism.
It is based on the original insights of Descartes, Kant, Husserl et
al. that our immediate reality is the starting point of all serious
philosophy. We cannot start with transcendence. It is precisely
because of this that the material world needs explaining but our
immediate reality needs another kind of analysis. That psychological
phenomena have a material basis and in a way can be explained by them
does not mean that they are on the same ontological level of being as
the material world. Explaining in this sense means finding
correlations and we can also speak of causation here, but in that
case we have no problem: we only have to go on finding more
correlations. This is the key to the fact that the being of
consciousness can never be explained by material phenomena on a
common conceptual framework. The bridge is not there, and there is
nothing from which it could appear.
Mind
and body can be ontologically identical in the way Spinoza saw them
as two attributes of one substance, but there is no way of explaining
the being of consciousness by physics or neuroscience. The
problem of what consciousness is cannot be solved by science. It is a
philosophical problem, and my philosophy says that there is no
problem of its being, only of its structure and relation to the
world.
If the
physical world transcends consciousness, how can consciousness be
immanent in the physical world?
There
must necessarily be the potential of subjectivity already in the
universe even before it becomes actual, and it also must become
actual. That potentiality is the ontological precondition of the
being of the universe. A universe without inhabitants is impossible.
I see the universe as an organism with no actual subjects at its
early phases, but evolving towards conscious states of individual
subjects, like an embryo which only becomes conscious when its time
comes. The philosophical problem is the relation of the material
universe to the various modes that subjectivity adopts in the form of
individual subjects during cosmic and biological evolution. But there
is no problem as to the essence of subjectivity or consciousness,
only as to its structure, i.e. its relation to the world. The task of
philosophy is reflective: it has to study our being in the world in
the way e.g. Husserl and Heidegger have done. And then we can go
further and step into the dangerous stream of speculative
metaphysics, however keeping in mind that we do not ignore empirical
evidence and logic.
I am an
epistemic realist and an ontological idealist, thinking that the
subject-object relation is ontologically fundamental, but the being
of the material universe is independent of the being of an individual
subject with its perceptions and other experiences. The big bang was
there in spite of the fact that no one was witnessing it. But someone
has witnessed, is witnessing or will witness something somewhere. A
universe empty of subjects is no universe but an absurdity. And I do
not believe in the existence of absurdities or in the existence of
nothingness. Reductio ad absurdum.
There
is no "hard problem" of consciousness, except in the minds
of some materialists, and failing to solve this pseudo problem does
not speak for the fruitfulness of materialistic ontology.
The
transcendental subject is not supernatural, it is the ontological
precondition of nature itself. And it was detected by Descartes,
Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein and others, perhaps with slightly
different interpretations. It was also behind Heidegger's Dasein,
although he criticized Husserl's interpretation of it. In fact it is
quite easy to detect with a little step of reflection. But I have
never seen anyone detect a material subject, unless it is a material
organism interpreted as subject, which has nothing to do with
subjectivity.
The transcendental subject is the 'I' of the 'I am such and such'. The 'such and such' varies in the universe, but the 'I' does not change or cease to be. It is the permanent reference point of our changing experiences of the world.
The transcendental subject is the 'I' of the 'I am such and such'. The 'such and such' varies in the universe, but the 'I' does not change or cease to be. It is the permanent reference point of our changing experiences of the world.
The
”hard problem” is based on a false ontology, and seeing that
removes the problem altogether. I do not think there is any kind of
soul substance. Consciousness is fundamental and original. It is
already there, so it needs no generation from any sort of spiritual
stuff. There is no such stuff. Consciousness, being already there, is
consciousness of the world, that is all. That makes the situation so
simple that only physicalists find it difficult.
There
is some truth in the view that consciousness is a flowing bundle of
ideas. But it is also true that there must be something to keep those
ideas together to make them my ideas. And this something is
exactly the transcendental or metaphysical subject that Wittgenstein
spoke of in Tractatus. Metaphorically it is, as he said, "a
point along which the world gets coordinated". I have gone
somewhat further than him, and that is what I mean by 'speculative
metaphysics'. But there is nothing mystical in the concept of
transcendental or metaphysical I: it is each of us as the
experiencer, not as an individual or empirical subject. It is not an
abstraction, it is very concrete, and detectable in reflection. We
only have to look closer and forget the world around us for a moment.
The
basic ontological structure of reality is the relation of the subject
to objects of the material world. This relation is expressed by my
immediate reality or consciousness as the subjective side of it, and
my body as the objective side of it. This means that my body and my
mind are parallel but conceptually incompatible ways of seeing one
and the same basic relation. So my immediate reality, immanence, gets
transcended in two directions: the world and the subject. I am
conscious of the world by my body, and the elements of this relation
are: (1) I, the transcendental subject (2) my individual
consciousness (3) my body, as part of the material world. The
subject, the 'I', has nothing to do with matter or any other
substance or substrate. It is the original and eternal point of view
to the world, where the 'point' is permanent and without inner
structure, but the 'view' changes all the time along with the
'world'.
My
epistemic conclusion is that consciousness can never find a cause or
reason for its own being, and my ontological conclusion is that there
is no cause or reason for its being.
The
universe is my universe. It does not vanish when I die, but if I
cease to exist, there is no universe, and has never been, for that
would be the end of time, and the past is the past of the
present.
So there is a paradox here, and the paradox cannot be resolved by saying that the universe is still there for the others, because the others are only others for me. This is the very definition of 'other'.
The logical conclusion seems to be that my death has nothing to do with my existence.
The universe of my yesterday is no more my universe, but the universe is still my universe, the universe of my present. In the same way when I am dead the dead person's universe is no more my universe, but the universe must still be my universe if it is the universe at all.
I have tried to solve this paradox by some metaphysical considerations elsewhere.
So there is a paradox here, and the paradox cannot be resolved by saying that the universe is still there for the others, because the others are only others for me. This is the very definition of 'other'.
The logical conclusion seems to be that my death has nothing to do with my existence.
The universe of my yesterday is no more my universe, but the universe is still my universe, the universe of my present. In the same way when I am dead the dead person's universe is no more my universe, but the universe must still be my universe if it is the universe at all.
I have tried to solve this paradox by some metaphysical considerations elsewhere.
About
“given as” and “taken as”: If we say that objects of the
world are taken as something, we presuppose some kind of freedom of
action, which brings to mind Sartre, for example. If we say that they
are given as something, we presuppose some kind of Logos or God or a
deep reality that is totally independent of our decisions. I am
inclined to assume the latter standpoint, but so that the Logos or
Absolute is not something transcendent but immanent in us. Reality
happens to us, not because some transcendent being or principle has
determined everything, but because the Logos is in us, as something
that determines what must happen. Or better still: we are the Logos,
evolving as an intersubjective community that reveals its own being
and the being of the world in a hermeneutic spiral.
By the way, although Wittgenstein's metaphysical 'I' is independent of what the world is like, the being of the 'I' depends on the being of the world and the being of the world depends on the being of the 'I'. Perhaps he did not say this, but it is a direct consequence of what he said. And this is a good starting point of developing some interesting metaphysics.
By the way, although Wittgenstein's metaphysical 'I' is independent of what the world is like, the being of the 'I' depends on the being of the world and the being of the world depends on the being of the 'I'. Perhaps he did not say this, but it is a direct consequence of what he said. And this is a good starting point of developing some interesting metaphysics.
What
transcends the spiral is what keeps the spiral going and also what
has started the movement of the spiral if there has been a beginning.
And indeed, it is within the spiral, not outside, not transcendent
but transcendental, as I understand that term. But the next question
is: are we in the world or does the world belong to our ontological
"structure", or are both only complementary ways of saying
the same thing?
From
Tractatus:
6.43 If good or
bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the
world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in
language.
In brief, the world must thereby become quite another.
It must so to speak wax or wane as a whole.
The world of the happy
is quite another than that of the unhappy.
I must
confess that I have never fully understood what he means. There is a
remark in Zettel where he says that it is very natural for him
to think that all our inner states or experiences need not have
physiological correlates. I think the above says the same thing. But
I think he is wrong: there are certainly physiological differences
between the happy and the unhappy, not to mention differences between
someone suffering pain and someone not suffering pain. And physiology
if anything belongs to the world. But perhaps he meant something
else.
So ethics in this sense is connected to the world, but it does not mean that our basic experiences, pain and happiness for instance, are ontologically something secondary and explainable by material events. They are the origin of all meaning, not ineffable in the sense that they can be expressed by language, being perhaps the very origin of language. But what is the origin of these basic experiences? What is the origin of evil? Now we come to the basic ontological structure of reality: the subject-object relation. The subject, which is the primus motor of everything, and which therefore cannot be eliminated from the picture, cannot exist without the world. Therefore it has to be in relation to the world, and with this original relation there emerges pain, happiness, unhappiness and other basic experiences that constitute our meaningful being in the world.
So ethics in this sense is connected to the world, but it does not mean that our basic experiences, pain and happiness for instance, are ontologically something secondary and explainable by material events. They are the origin of all meaning, not ineffable in the sense that they can be expressed by language, being perhaps the very origin of language. But what is the origin of these basic experiences? What is the origin of evil? Now we come to the basic ontological structure of reality: the subject-object relation. The subject, which is the primus motor of everything, and which therefore cannot be eliminated from the picture, cannot exist without the world. Therefore it has to be in relation to the world, and with this original relation there emerges pain, happiness, unhappiness and other basic experiences that constitute our meaningful being in the world.
I would
say that the 'I', being “metaphysical”, point-like, without
internal properties, must be the permanent reference point of the
world, whatever the world is like. So it is independent of facts but
dependent on the being of the world, whatever the world is like. And
what is also important: there cannot be a world without this 'I', so
that the subject-object relation is fundamental whatever the objects
are. And we can develop this further, despite the anti-metaphysical
attitude of Wittgenstein.
I tend to disagree with Wittgenstein on the transcendental nature of ethics and its independence of facts. Ethics comes into the picture as we meet the world, and we meet the world with our bodies, which makes the facts of the world change all the time. But I am an ontological idealist and think that what we are as experiencing subjects is the clue and essence of everything there is, the dominant part of the subject-object relation. But this leads us into the depths of metaphysics again.
I tend to disagree with Wittgenstein on the transcendental nature of ethics and its independence of facts. Ethics comes into the picture as we meet the world, and we meet the world with our bodies, which makes the facts of the world change all the time. But I am an ontological idealist and think that what we are as experiencing subjects is the clue and essence of everything there is, the dominant part of the subject-object relation. But this leads us into the depths of metaphysics again.
What is
can always be taken in various ways, it is not transparent in this
sense. That is why there is such a thing as science. What is
transcends what we know. The world is transcendent. Ontology, if it
does not coincide with epistemic idealism, recognizes this. But
ontological idealism is not in conflict with epistemic realism. Even
if there is something we never know, it is there in relation to the
subject that experiences something here and now. It is outside of
this “here and now”, but this “here and now”, this present
experience must exist for there to be something outside of it.
We are individual subjects and we are not eternal, so the world is independent of our personal existence, but its being depends on the present experience of a subject, whoever or whatever that subject happens to be. I have used the terms 'subjectivity' and 'the subject' as synonyms to denote the experiencer as opposed to an individual, empirical subject with this particular body and these particular memories, and it is on this subjectivity that the being of the world depends on, not on me as an individual person.
And if we like to go into metaphysical speculation, as I do, we can speculate on what connects individual subjects to subjectivity in general and to each other. But that is another story.
We are individual subjects and we are not eternal, so the world is independent of our personal existence, but its being depends on the present experience of a subject, whoever or whatever that subject happens to be. I have used the terms 'subjectivity' and 'the subject' as synonyms to denote the experiencer as opposed to an individual, empirical subject with this particular body and these particular memories, and it is on this subjectivity that the being of the world depends on, not on me as an individual person.
And if we like to go into metaphysical speculation, as I do, we can speculate on what connects individual subjects to subjectivity in general and to each other. But that is another story.
By
Logos I mean our immanent ability to make sense of our existence and
the world around us. Science can only produce facts and put them into
a logical framework, although it belongs to the same ability. But, as
Wittgenstein says in Tractatus:
6.52 We feel
that even if all possible scientific questions be answered,
the
problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course
there
is then no question left, and just this is the answer.
Science
cannot help us understand our existence: why are we here, why is
there a world at all, what is consciousness and so on. I do not know
if 'Logos' is the proper concept here, but I mean something that
gives us transparency of our existence so that we end up seeing that
our being in the world does not need an explanation any more. Reality
is causa sui.
It is
absurd to think of a world with its logic without an 'I'.
Wittgenstein says that logic does not precede the “what”, only
the “how”. How can there be logic without the subject?
My
ontological standpoint is that the being of the subject is
fundamental and that the subject manifests itself as individual
subjects. And an individual subject need not be aware of everything
for there being the basic subject-object relation as an ontological
precondition for the being of the world.
I think
the word 'I' denotes two things: an individual, empirical subject and
the transcendental subject that only happens to be this empirical
subject.
I
interpret Wittgenstein so that the world is there with its logic and
always with an 'I' whose world it is. So it is independent of a
particular empirical subject but depends on subjectivity because the
world is always my world, whoever that 'I' happens to be. The being
of the world, the being of logic and the being of the metaphysical
subject are equiprimordial.
The
world is transcendent and some parts or features of it may remain
unknown for ever, but even if they remain unknown, they remain
unknown for immanence, for subjectivity, for us, whoever is
experiencing something in the world. A universe without subjects who
bring meaning to it would be something that is impossible to think
about without contradicting oneself. Its impossibility can be proved
by a reductio ad absurdum.
There
is no separate empirical subject, only a manifestation of the
transcendental subject which happens to have this body and these
memories. I think memory is the crucial phenomenon that defines an
individual.
My view
is: the 'I' is in no space at all, because it is transcendental, but
it is always there as an ontological precondition of the being of the
world.
When
Wittgenstein says that the world is my world and logic is the
precondition of the being of the world for me, he describes the
concrete reality. If he had said that there is a world, and logic is
the precondition of its being, that would have been an abstraction.
The world in itself is an abstraction, a prejudice of materialism.
The concrete reality is my existence in the world or, if we bring
intersubjectivity to the expression, our being in the world. If we
remove the 'my' or 'our', nothing is left. Here is the absurdum.
To sum
up: The world is transcendent. Transcendence is transcendence for us.
Belief in transcendence in itself has no justification,
because we are not in a position to say anything about it.
The
universe is conscious because we are in the universe. By 'we' I mean
all the individual subjects in the universe. The universe is
essentially our universe. When we speak of the universe we
have already presupposed the speaker, and even if we say that the
being of the universe is independent of our being we have already
presupposed our being. So there is no way of speaking meaningfully of
the universe in itself. As we try to speak of it, we find that we are
speaking of the universe we are in. We cannot eliminate ourselves
from the picture. And there is no justification for positing
something we cannot speak of in principle. What cannot be spoken of
cannot be posited. However, this is exactly what materialism does.
Therefore it is logically inconsistent.
What I
am saying here has nothing to do with God. This is phenomenological
ontology. Philosophy must start with immanence, our immediate
reality, and if there is transcendence found as a result of the
phenomenological analysis of immanence, like the transcendence of the
material world, this is only a result, not the starting point.
Therefore naturalism cannot be the starting point of philosophy.
Philosophy must explain itself and nature, although this is an
ambitious task.
We must
assume that the basic structures of consciousness are common to us.
And we can reach them by our common language, because the structures
of language express those structures. The chair you are sitting on is
transcendent, and its transcendence can also be seen through
phenomenological intuition if it is not clear already.
If
naturalism is defined as the rejection of supernatural reality, then
I think it is compatible with phenomenology. But if it says that
philosophy must take as its starting point the reality that empirical
science deals with, without questioning its justification, then it
is, in my opinion, against the principles of phenomenology. This is
where we come to such pseudo problems as the "hard problem"
of consciousness, problems that have their origin in committing to a
false ontology.
By God
we usually mean the cause or reason for our existence. As the cause
of our existence God is the universe seen as a totality. As the
reason for our existence God must be identified with the Self,
because reasons can only be for the Self. And the conclusion of all
this is that the Self is the reason for the being of the universe and
itself.
I think
death is forgetting. When I am dead, I do not remember who I was. I
will be another. And I think Heraclitus was right: I cannot step
twice into the same stream. There is only one Self that goes through
all individual lives. But I cannot step into another's life when I am
who I am, only afterwards.
There
may be various definitions of substance. This is Spinoza's definition
in Ethics:
By substance, I
mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in
other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently
of any other conception.
According
to this definition neither matter nor mind can be substance, because
they are interdependent. The concrete reality is the subject-object
relation. Spinoza says that mind and body are attributes of one and
the same substance which he calls Nature or God, and the body is the
object of the mind.
When I see a tree, physical causality goes from the tree to my brain with photons hitting my retina and so on. This chain of events is expressed as my perception of the tree. If this is called causation is a matter of definition, but it is not physical causation. The same applies when I do something because I want to do it.
But the point is that my perception of a tree is not located in physical spacetime, not even in my brain. It is part of my subjective world and subjective time where I am conscious of the physical world.
When I see a tree, physical causality goes from the tree to my brain with photons hitting my retina and so on. This chain of events is expressed as my perception of the tree. If this is called causation is a matter of definition, but it is not physical causation. The same applies when I do something because I want to do it.
But the point is that my perception of a tree is not located in physical spacetime, not even in my brain. It is part of my subjective world and subjective time where I am conscious of the physical world.
Physical
causation happens within the physical world:
tree-photons-retina-brain. My perception is not really caused by
these in the physical sense of the term, but goes parallel with them,
being an expression of them. My perception is not conceptually
compatible with the physical events that "cause" them in
another meaning of the term. And therefore there cannot be a
mechanism that would connect them. The physical events are the
necessary material conditions for the perception. The "mind/body"
problem is a pseudo problem. My view is that it is caused by
unjustified commitment to materialistic ontology.
My
being in the world means that I am related to the material universe
by being conscious of it. The subjective side of this relation is my
consciousness or mind, and its objective side is my body. But the
relation is one and the same, only seen from two perspectives. So the
relation is not one of causation but identity, only seen from two
conceptually incompatible points of view. When photons hit my retina,
they cause something to happen in my body, and I experience this
effect as seeing a tree, for instance. So there is no link, no
bridge, between body and mind. The subject-object relation is
fundamental. This is how I see the situation.
It is
an interesting question whether quantum mechanics has something to do
with the fact that our decisions and doings go parallel with and in
this sense have an effect on the material world. I have not a clear
answer to this. But I think the physical effects cannot happen
against the laws of physics.
The
subject-object relation is fundamental, and both sides are equally
original ontologically, though not in physical spacetime. So
awareness does not arise from matter, it only needs matter for its
basis of being. Therefore I do not ask what makes a physical system
have an internal awareness, but what must the physical system be like
in order for me to be conscious of it. This is my version of the
mind/body problem.
My
subjective time is a series of presents or “nows” that constantly
change their mode of being from present to past, as new presents
replace them from the future. There must have been the first “now”,
for if there had been a “now” before each “now”, I could not
be here now: there could not be the “now” I am experiencing at
present. There cannot be the last “now”, because this would mean
that there would be non-being: if I did not exist, there would be
nothing, which would be absurd and self-contradictory. So my
subjective time has a beginning and no end. There is a parallel to
this in cosmology, where the universe has started from zero, the
singularity we know as the Big Bang, and will possibly expand with no
end.
Now I have described my subjective time where my experiences of the world follow each other without an end. But are there other subjective times, times of others? I do not think so. For terms like 'subjective' and 'experience' denote 'my subjectivity' and 'my experiences'. If there were experiences that I never experience, it would be the same as saying that there is something which is not there. As I said, there can be experiences that are not here and now, being in the past or future, but they must nevertheless be experiences in relation to my present experience, so that I have had them in the past or will have them in the future. So the others' experiences must be in my past or in my future. This is the solution for the paradox of foreign minds.
And who is this 'I'? I am not only my body, my genetic code and my memories. I can be whatever body, whatever genetic code, whoever's memories. So I am something that transcends my personal identity: I am the transcendental subject that manifests itself as every individual subject in the cosmic space-time, each in its proper time. And because this flow of existence is endless, there are no loops in it: I cannot step twice into the same stream.
This is metaphysical speculation, but it solves the paradox of death and the paradox of foreign minds or foreign experiences.
Now I have described my subjective time where my experiences of the world follow each other without an end. But are there other subjective times, times of others? I do not think so. For terms like 'subjective' and 'experience' denote 'my subjectivity' and 'my experiences'. If there were experiences that I never experience, it would be the same as saying that there is something which is not there. As I said, there can be experiences that are not here and now, being in the past or future, but they must nevertheless be experiences in relation to my present experience, so that I have had them in the past or will have them in the future. So the others' experiences must be in my past or in my future. This is the solution for the paradox of foreign minds.
And who is this 'I'? I am not only my body, my genetic code and my memories. I can be whatever body, whatever genetic code, whoever's memories. So I am something that transcends my personal identity: I am the transcendental subject that manifests itself as every individual subject in the cosmic space-time, each in its proper time. And because this flow of existence is endless, there are no loops in it: I cannot step twice into the same stream.
This is metaphysical speculation, but it solves the paradox of death and the paradox of foreign minds or foreign experiences.
This is all beyond language and can only be seen in a phenomenological intuition. When we try to put it into words, we are in the middle of paradoxes in expressing our ideas. It all becomes sort of poetry. But let us read each others' poems.
There
is a question of subjective time vs. physical time. The unit of
subjective time as I understand it is the present, the "now".
There is nothing between two successive "nows", but there
can be a million years of physical time between them, in principle at
least. Subjective time is what we originally mean by time, with its
present, past and future modes of being. Physical time is a secondary
phenomenon, the time we measure with clocks. It has no present, past
or future. By being I mean my subjective being, and as an ontological
idealist I think all being is related to my subjective being, the 'I'
here denoting the transcendental subject. So in this sense I am not
something that exists at one point of time and does not exist at
another point of time. Time is an inner structure of being and
physical time is based on this original time as we are concerned with
the physical world with our clocks.
It is
true that modern cosmology regards the universe as a totality of
space-time with a geometrical structure, and so looks at it from the
perspective of eternity. But the philosophically most interesting
question, for me at least, is the relation of subjective time with
its present, past and future to this cosmic "eternity".
I think
the modern cosmological view of the universe is like stepping outside
of the universe and seeing it as a spatio-temporal totality where
space and time are intertwined. It is not timeless because it has the
temporal component in its structure, but it is not eternal either,
because there is no time outside of it. So it is seen purely from a
mathematical point of view, as an abstraction where subjective time
has been eliminated as useless in physics. And there is nothing wrong
with this, as long as physics does not try to explain subjective time
and other subjective phenomena by trying to reduce them to physics.
That would be a total misunderstanding of what our reality is about.
My
being or, as Heidegger put it, the being of Dasein, is
temporal. My being is not the same as the being of the universe, but
they go parallel. If my being ends, the being of the universe is
canceled. But I cannot cancel the universe. The universe is what it
is. Therefore my temporal finitude is impossible.
Not formal logic, but a piece of phenomenology.
Not formal logic, but a piece of phenomenology.
If it
were possible for an AI to be conscious there should be a theoretical
possibility that we are all AI's made by some conscious being, maybe
the one we call God. And perhaps God is also an AI. But there must be
someone who is not an AI. I think it is me, and all of us who make
and think of "thinking" machines, and all the conscious
inhabitants of our universe. And it is precisely because we are not
AI's that we are conscious. This is what my intuition tells me.
The
whole question is what 'I' really denotes. I have a body. I have
memories. But I am not my body or memories. If I were, I would not
say I have them. The being of the 'I' is manifested in the person
that I am. I can say that I am this person. But I can also ask why I
am this person and not someone else. I can destroy the person that I
am. But I cannot destroy the subjectivity behind the person that I
am. I only happen to be the person that I am, and if I were not this
person, I would be another person somewhere else. Persons are mortal,
but the subject is eternal. The non-being of the subjectivity that
'I' denotes is absurd if we think of it thoroughly. So I believe in
my afterlife but not my personal afterlife.
'I am' is not the same as 'you are'. My “here and now” is not the same as your “here and now”. But you can say the same, with exactly the same words. So our relation to each other is symmetrical. But as I am speaking it is not symmetrical because you are not me as an individual subject. If there is a deeper connection between us, it is necessarily outside of language. Language lacks the ability to express these kinds of metaphysical deep structures if there are such structures. And I believe there are.
'I am' is not the same as 'you are'. My “here and now” is not the same as your “here and now”. But you can say the same, with exactly the same words. So our relation to each other is symmetrical. But as I am speaking it is not symmetrical because you are not me as an individual subject. If there is a deeper connection between us, it is necessarily outside of language. Language lacks the ability to express these kinds of metaphysical deep structures if there are such structures. And I believe there are.
My
nonexistence is impossible, as I have "proved" elsewhere
and which can be seen in a phenomenological intuition. But the I that
does not vanish is not a soul or identity, it is just me, the pure I,
without any other characteristics. It is not me as a person. And it
is the same I as your I. But the connection between us needs further
understanding, for instance about the relation between subjective
time and physical time. So this is a combination of intuition and
speculation, a metaphysical hypothesis that tries to answer our
critical existential questions, and despite being seemingly
paradoxical in some respects it is logically consistent and indeed
answers those questions.
The concept of the metaphysical subject a´la Wittgenstein or the transcendental subject as I understand it seems to be the key point and difficult to understand. And it is also difficult to explain if one does not have an insight of what it means.
To sum up, my hypothesis is based on these premises:
1. My nonexistence is impossible.
2. There are no foreign experiences.
The concept of the metaphysical subject a´la Wittgenstein or the transcendental subject as I understand it seems to be the key point and difficult to understand. And it is also difficult to explain if one does not have an insight of what it means.
To sum up, my hypothesis is based on these premises:
1. My nonexistence is impossible.
2. There are no foreign experiences.
'I'
denotes the present abstracted from its content. Subjective time
means that the present always has a content and a next content.
Everything
is as it is. Nothing changes when we die. It is only a question of
the way we see reality in a logically consistent way. It is the same
as in the case of physics and cosmology. We have the standard model
and general relativity and we seek a unified theory that would
"explain" everything. We seek it because there are logical
inconsistencies in our present theories.
The same is needed for philosophical theories about our existence. We have paradoxes like death and foreign minds and we cannot understand their meaning. So we seek "existential symmetries" that would make our situation more understandable, in the same way as physicists seek symmetries that explain material events.
In every physical symmetry there is something that does not change when the situation changes. In the existential symmetry I am suggesting that the present is always there, only its content changes. And the being of the present needs no explanation.
The same is needed for philosophical theories about our existence. We have paradoxes like death and foreign minds and we cannot understand their meaning. So we seek "existential symmetries" that would make our situation more understandable, in the same way as physicists seek symmetries that explain material events.
In every physical symmetry there is something that does not change when the situation changes. In the existential symmetry I am suggesting that the present is always there, only its content changes. And the being of the present needs no explanation.
By the
present I mean the present experience. Physical time is
another thing. What is not experienced does not belong to subjective
time.
Mankind
has always had a pre-ontological concept of eternity. Psychological
or evolution-based explanations do not make it insignificant. I think
Heidegger was right: we have forgotten that we exist.
Remember
Wittgenstein's metaphysical subject in Tractatus. To say it
is, is of course problematic, because we have many ways of
speaking of being. I would say it is the transcendental condition of
there being a world at all. And we can make metaphysical conclusions
from it, although Wittgenstein did not want to go into such
scenarios.
If
there is no link between my being and another's being, there is
nothing after my death. Not for me. Which says the same as nothing in
general. Because in that case there is no me, which is an essential
part of the fundamental subject-object relation. And this is
paradoxical, as I have "proved" elsewhere. But if someone
sees that there is no paradox or that the paradox can be solved in
another way, that is fine, and I would be happy to hear other
opinions about what death really is. I mean opinions that are not as
superficial as they mostly are.
It is the present, the "here and now" that is the key, being on the border of being and non-being. Without the present there is nothing, and this concerns being in general, not "only" my personal being.
The link that connects my being to being in general in the mode of others' being is subjective time as such, abstracted from its content: that after this "now" there will be a next "now", whatever that "now" may be like. This is my version of the concept of eternity that we have always had in our minds in various forms, sometimes vaguely, sometimes more clearly.
It is the present, the "here and now" that is the key, being on the border of being and non-being. Without the present there is nothing, and this concerns being in general, not "only" my personal being.
The link that connects my being to being in general in the mode of others' being is subjective time as such, abstracted from its content: that after this "now" there will be a next "now", whatever that "now" may be like. This is my version of the concept of eternity that we have always had in our minds in various forms, sometimes vaguely, sometimes more clearly.
It is
possible that there is no active "I" that freely chooses
what it thinks. Maybe everything just happens. Thoughts come and go.
But who or what is it that thinks? Is it my mind? When I say "It
thinks, therefore it is", who says so? My mind? So my mind finds
that it thinks? Now I have succeeded to remove myself from the
picture altogether. There are minds thinking of themselves but no me.
However, as seen above, I cannot speak of these things without using
the first person pronoun. What is its role in our language? It cannot
denote my mind, because I can say "I am conscious of the world",
and this relation has three parts: (1) "I" (2)
consciousness or mind (3) the world. None of these can be removed
from this basic relation that constitutes my existence. And this is
what I mean when I say that the subject-object relation is
fundamental.
My mind cannot go anywhere when I die. I can, possibly. My mind is an entity, I am not. 'I' denotes the transcendental condition of the being of my mind and the world.
My mind cannot go anywhere when I die. I can, possibly. My mind is an entity, I am not. 'I' denotes the transcendental condition of the being of my mind and the world.
I am in
the world. This “in” is the expression of my relation to the
world, meaning that I am conscious of the world. So my being
in the world does not consist of the contents of my consciousness,
because those contents are usually about the world. The
contents of my consciousness express what the world means to me. And
our language reflects this relation: our ordinary language games
presuppose epistemological realism. Only some philosophical language
games try to express something else.
However, this does not mean that the being of the world is independent of subjectivity. The world is a world for a subject, whoever or whatever that subject happens to be. So ontological “idealism” and epistemological realism are not incompatible.
However, this does not mean that the being of the world is independent of subjectivity. The world is a world for a subject, whoever or whatever that subject happens to be. So ontological “idealism” and epistemological realism are not incompatible.
I think
what Descartes really found was the transcendental condition of his
thinking and perceiving the world, the non-empirical, metaphysical
subject that Wittgenstein spoke of and what makes the world "my
world".
But
Descartes was wrong when he thought that the "I" is some
sort of substance. In fact it has no empirical content. It gets its
content from the fact that I am conscious of the world.
So what Descartes must have had in mind was something like this: "I think. I am. Therefore subjectivity must be something fundamental." He only could not express himself clearly enough.
So what Descartes must have had in mind was something like this: "I think. I am. Therefore subjectivity must be something fundamental." He only could not express himself clearly enough.
When I
say that I perceive my thoughts I am saying that I reflect on them.
This is exactly what Descartes did. If I were Descartes, I would
think this way: I have a perception of a bird. I have a thought of my
perception of a bird. These are my experiential states. But my having
these experiential states is not itself an experiential state. So I
have thoughts, and this ordinary language expression tells us
the situation clearly enough. That I have thoughts means that my
thoughts are mine only, although I can speak about them with
others.
Now when I reflect on or perceive my thoughts, I find out what happens when I think. I see the situation as a totality. And the totality is this: I am conscious of the world. This totality consists of a “holy trinity”: (1) I am (2) conscious of (3) the world. None of these components of the whole can be removed without destroying the totality. So the “I” remains if the world remains. And if the world is something that necessarily exists, also I must necessarily exist, although not as the individual subject I happen to be.
This means that the “I” is an abstraction. I cannot be without my being conscious of the world and therefore without the being of the world. But in connection with the world I am concretely in the world. This is how the “I” exists. And this is why it must be presupposed. Because it is an abstraction without empirical content, there is no empirical evidence of it, but it can be detected in a phenomenological intuition, as Descartes did. And we must also presuppose it on logical grounds, because a thought needs a thinker, although not necessarily as an active agent.
So when Descartes concluded “I think, therefore I am”, he had an insight, as he reflected his own thinking, that his thinking and his thoughts must presuppose the being of something that he called 'I am': that subjectivity is fundamental as an ontological precondition of all thinking and all being whatsoever. Subjectivity transcends thinking and this transcending can be seen through thinking, by reflecting on our thinking. That is why the subject, in its deepest meaning, is transcendental.
Another way to define the “I” is to say that it is the present abstracted from its content. In this way it gets connected to subjective time.
This is also the meaning of the sentence that I have repeated many times: If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
Now when I reflect on or perceive my thoughts, I find out what happens when I think. I see the situation as a totality. And the totality is this: I am conscious of the world. This totality consists of a “holy trinity”: (1) I am (2) conscious of (3) the world. None of these components of the whole can be removed without destroying the totality. So the “I” remains if the world remains. And if the world is something that necessarily exists, also I must necessarily exist, although not as the individual subject I happen to be.
This means that the “I” is an abstraction. I cannot be without my being conscious of the world and therefore without the being of the world. But in connection with the world I am concretely in the world. This is how the “I” exists. And this is why it must be presupposed. Because it is an abstraction without empirical content, there is no empirical evidence of it, but it can be detected in a phenomenological intuition, as Descartes did. And we must also presuppose it on logical grounds, because a thought needs a thinker, although not necessarily as an active agent.
So when Descartes concluded “I think, therefore I am”, he had an insight, as he reflected his own thinking, that his thinking and his thoughts must presuppose the being of something that he called 'I am': that subjectivity is fundamental as an ontological precondition of all thinking and all being whatsoever. Subjectivity transcends thinking and this transcending can be seen through thinking, by reflecting on our thinking. That is why the subject, in its deepest meaning, is transcendental.
Another way to define the “I” is to say that it is the present abstracted from its content. In this way it gets connected to subjective time.
This is also the meaning of the sentence that I have repeated many times: If I did not exist, there would be nothing.
My
physical body is my instrument for being related to the world. The
subject is transcendental but needs my body for its being. And there
can be no experiential states floating around without an "I"
whose experiential states they are. It is as simple as that.
In a
way my neural processes are the same as my mental states, because
they are the objective side of my relation to the material world.
There is one relation, but the subjective side (mental states) and
the objective side (neural processes) are conceptually incompatible.
Therefore the "hard problem" of consciousness is
unsurmountable, and that is because it is in fact a pseudo problem,
like the "mind/body problem". They are both based on a
misunderstanding of the structure of our being in the world, the
subject-object relation which is fundamental, so that the subject is
always already there as a precondition of the being of the world.
As I
reflect on my thoughts, this reflecting is an experiential state, but
I have this state among other experiential states, and this 'I
have' is like 'I am', but none of them are experiential states. They
are something more primordial, so that they cannot be eliminated by
saying that there are only experiential states but nothing that has
them.
Experiential
states cannot float around and suddenly say 'I am'. I have
experiential states. I am conscious of the world, and the "I"
cannot be eliminated by saying something like "there are
consciousnesses of the world".
One
more thing. When I see a bird, I have a perception of the bird. But
my seeing the bird or having the perception of the bird
is not part of the perception. Now when I reflect on my perception of
the bird, the content of my new perception can be described as "I
saw a bird". The 'I saw' is now part of my perception. But the
”I” in the 'I saw' is the very same ”I” as the ”I” of my
new perception of having seen a bird. The "I" connects the
two perceptions as my perceptions. And because the "I"
is part of the new perception, it can be detected, as was the case
with Descartes. So I have experiences and I am the subject of all my
experiences. I cannot eliminate myself from reality. Materialism
tries to do so, and is therefore self-contradictory, in fact trying
to eliminate itself.
The
sense of self had evolved so much that Descartes could finally detect
the self. And so can we. I am wondering why we want so desperately to
get rid of ourselves. The sense of self is an experience, the self is
not.
I think
we should not bring neuroscience to the analysis of the subject,
because all experiences have neurological correlates, but the subject
is not an experience and therefore has no neurological correlates.
The subject is the ontological precondition of experiences and their
correlates. Brain events cannot create the subject, nor can the
subject get created by self-organizing experiences. The subject is
already there, along with its experiences which constitute its
concrete existence. We can say that, in a sense, brain events create
experiences, but they create them for the subject, so that the
experiences are always my experiences, whoever or whatever I
happen to be.
If some day we have a scientific theory of everything, it cannot explain the being of the subject.
If some day we have a scientific theory of everything, it cannot explain the being of the subject.
Wittgenstein
avoided metaphysical language games, but I think he was a bit too
rigorous. Why not metaphysics? In metaphysical language a sentence
like "The subject is conscious of the world" can be used to
describe the basic structure of our existence. We only use words in
different ways for different purposes. It is also a matter of
learning a new language game, so to speak. But of course we must
avoid those fly bottles.
It is
clear that the basic components and basic laws of physics must be
such that it is possible for me to be here and think about my
existence. But this does not mean that subjectivity arises from the
material world which physics describes and explains. Matter cannot
become conscious of itself. There is no such thing as the world in
itself. The world is always my world, or better: a world for me,
whoever I happen to be. Subjectivity manifests itself as individual
subjects, but without subjectivity there cannot be anything at all,
which is self-contradictory. Without an experiencing subject which is
conscious of the world the world would cancel its existence. So the
subject and the world are both original, fundamental components of
the basic structure of reality: the subject-object relation. The
world has an instrumental role in the being of the subject: it makes
my concrete existence possible or realizes it. So we can say that
matter is the physical basis of the being of the subject but not its
ontological basis.
Therefore we can never scientifically explain the being of the subject. Why there is subjectivity can only be understood within subjectivity. Subjectivity is like matter: they are both fundamental. In this way we come to a seemingly dualistic world view: there is subjectivity and the material universe, neither of which can be without the other but neither of which can be explained by the other. And it is true, to repeat, that subjectivity cannot be explained by matter, but there is still the philosophically interesting question of the relation between subjectivity and matter. My suggestion as to where to start developing a theory of everything is this: we must try to understand subjectivity, our own being, within subjectivity itself, and in doing this we can hopefully also understand why the being of the material universe is necessary for the being of subjectivity, for my existence.
To start, we can ask ourselves: What do I really want? Do I want to live for ever? Where will I be in the year 2500? What is nothingness like? What if I had never been born? Why was I born? What is the universe? And also the famous: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Answers to these kinds of questions cannot be found by science, they can only be found by thinking about existence itself, by reflection, meditation, phenomenological intuition, within the realm of subjectivity. And I believe that we can make some progress also in these studies which are usually seen as metaphysical speculation. In my opinion this is the only road to a theory of everything, because there cannot be a scientific theory of everything that includes subjectivity within its field of study.
Therefore we can never scientifically explain the being of the subject. Why there is subjectivity can only be understood within subjectivity. Subjectivity is like matter: they are both fundamental. In this way we come to a seemingly dualistic world view: there is subjectivity and the material universe, neither of which can be without the other but neither of which can be explained by the other. And it is true, to repeat, that subjectivity cannot be explained by matter, but there is still the philosophically interesting question of the relation between subjectivity and matter. My suggestion as to where to start developing a theory of everything is this: we must try to understand subjectivity, our own being, within subjectivity itself, and in doing this we can hopefully also understand why the being of the material universe is necessary for the being of subjectivity, for my existence.
To start, we can ask ourselves: What do I really want? Do I want to live for ever? Where will I be in the year 2500? What is nothingness like? What if I had never been born? Why was I born? What is the universe? And also the famous: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Answers to these kinds of questions cannot be found by science, they can only be found by thinking about existence itself, by reflection, meditation, phenomenological intuition, within the realm of subjectivity. And I believe that we can make some progress also in these studies which are usually seen as metaphysical speculation. In my opinion this is the only road to a theory of everything, because there cannot be a scientific theory of everything that includes subjectivity within its field of study.
It
seems that there is no meaningful way of speaking about bodiless
minds or souls or subjectivity without a material basis. But as soon
as we speak about a basis, seeking a basis for something, we have
already presupposed the being of that something for which we seek a
basis. What is that something?
There is the cosmic evolution, starting from singularity and building more and more complex structures, and there is the biological evolution building living organisms, and one of those organisms happens to be my body. And it is my body. I cannot eliminate the 'I' from this description. Materialism and physicalism try to do this: they argue that there are only material organisms which have that peculiar property we call consciousness or mind. Perhaps they also try to explain subjectivity itself by saying that it is also a property of matter, so that there remains no 'I' at all. But by doing so they eliminate themselves. The subject is always there already, explicitly or implicitly – and in modern science usually implicitly, because science is unreflective in its empiricism. That is why we need philosophy, in spite of the fact that some physicists hate it.
So the being of the mind presupposes the being of matter, but also the being of matter needs a basis: it presupposes subjectivity for its being. There is no such thing as the universe in itself with no one being conscious of it. That would be absurd and self-contradictory. Subjectivity and the material universe are interdependent, but subjectivity gives the world its meaning and is the reason for its being.
When speaking about 'subjectivity' or 'mind' we are always in danger of reifying something which should not be reified. But by ignoring those concepts altogether we get into trouble. It is a question of seeing the basic structure of our existence.
There is the cosmic evolution, starting from singularity and building more and more complex structures, and there is the biological evolution building living organisms, and one of those organisms happens to be my body. And it is my body. I cannot eliminate the 'I' from this description. Materialism and physicalism try to do this: they argue that there are only material organisms which have that peculiar property we call consciousness or mind. Perhaps they also try to explain subjectivity itself by saying that it is also a property of matter, so that there remains no 'I' at all. But by doing so they eliminate themselves. The subject is always there already, explicitly or implicitly – and in modern science usually implicitly, because science is unreflective in its empiricism. That is why we need philosophy, in spite of the fact that some physicists hate it.
So the being of the mind presupposes the being of matter, but also the being of matter needs a basis: it presupposes subjectivity for its being. There is no such thing as the universe in itself with no one being conscious of it. That would be absurd and self-contradictory. Subjectivity and the material universe are interdependent, but subjectivity gives the world its meaning and is the reason for its being.
When speaking about 'subjectivity' or 'mind' we are always in danger of reifying something which should not be reified. But by ignoring those concepts altogether we get into trouble. It is a question of seeing the basic structure of our existence.
We can
never scientifically explain the being of the subject. This is an
ontological standpoint. I could have said instead: "We can never
scientifically explain the being of matter or the being of the
universe". We can perhaps understand the being of
subjectivity and the being of the universe, but empirical science
cannot touch these questions because they are essentially
philosophical.
That
subjectivity and matter are interdependent does not mean that all
matter is conscious. An embryo is not conscious, but it will be. And
that it will be conscious is not something that can happen or not
happen when we think of the universe as a whole. The universe is
inhabited, it is made of objects for subjects, whoever or whatever
those subjects happen to be. The universe is our universe, we
give it a meaning and reason for being.
I have
a body. I have a brain. I have thoughts. What is the relation between
my thoughts and my brain? And what is my relation to my thoughts, my
brain, and the physical world in general? Can I say that my brain
produces my thoughts? No, that would lead us astray. It would be a
strange way of using language. Matter can only produce matter. There
is no conceptual bridge between my thoughts and my brain which would
make it possible to explain my thoughts by my brain events.
Correlations are not explanations. If my thoughts were a material
property of my brain, there should be a material mechanism that
connects those two kinds of phenomena. But there is no such
mechanism. So what kind of a relation is there between mind and
brain?
Spinoza says that the body is the object of the mind. I would say that my brain is my instrument for thinking about the physical world and reflecting on my own thoughts, in short: my instrument for being in the world. And the world itself can be seen as a totality of instruments à la Heidegger. It does not necessarily follow that I am an active agent using my brain and body as instruments of my free will, only that the material world, being the physical basis of my existence, is there for me, making my being possible in a concrete way. And by 'my being' I mean the being of all of us who have any kind of experiences, the participants of subjectivity.
In this scenario the basic structure of our existence and reality in general has these components: (1) the subject, or I, which should not be reified, (2) my thoughts and other phenomena of my mind, which should not be reified either, (3) the physical world, my body being part of it. So our basic situation is: (1) I (2) experience (3) the world. None of these components can be removed without destroying everything.
My brain does not think. I think with my brain. It would be strange indeed if there were material organisms floating around and producing thoughts, and also producing something called 'I'.
Spinoza says that the body is the object of the mind. I would say that my brain is my instrument for thinking about the physical world and reflecting on my own thoughts, in short: my instrument for being in the world. And the world itself can be seen as a totality of instruments à la Heidegger. It does not necessarily follow that I am an active agent using my brain and body as instruments of my free will, only that the material world, being the physical basis of my existence, is there for me, making my being possible in a concrete way. And by 'my being' I mean the being of all of us who have any kind of experiences, the participants of subjectivity.
In this scenario the basic structure of our existence and reality in general has these components: (1) the subject, or I, which should not be reified, (2) my thoughts and other phenomena of my mind, which should not be reified either, (3) the physical world, my body being part of it. So our basic situation is: (1) I (2) experience (3) the world. None of these components can be removed without destroying everything.
My brain does not think. I think with my brain. It would be strange indeed if there were material organisms floating around and producing thoughts, and also producing something called 'I'.
There
are good descriptions of the difficulties concerning the scientific
mind/body problem. But I think that the difficulties are
insurmountable because there is no scientific mind/body problem, due
to the ontological structure of reality. The scientific problem is to
find correlations between experiences and brain events, and the rest
of the problem is seeing or not seeing the fundamental nature of
consciousness. Consciousness cannot be explained by brain events, but
the being of consciousness is possible to understand in the same way
as it is possible to understand the being of matter and the relation
between them. And these are philosophical problems, not scientific.
Science has already made ontological commitments, and it is the task
of philosophy to criticize those commitments. So this is not an
empirical problem at all, a problem that would be solved by finding
evidence or making experiments. All evidence is there already, we
must only see our situation as it is, not creating pseudo problems.
So
where is the subject then? You find it in the "I saw..."
and when you see that the 'I' in the "I saw..." is the same
'I' as the 'I' in your reflecting on the "I saw...", i.e.
when you find subjective continuity. But this is just the beginning
of the phenomenological analysis of the subject.
Suppose
we have a perfect theory of matter, an improved standard model, a
theory that describes in a logically consistent way everything that
happens in nature. This theory also explains all physiological
phenomena including brain events.
Does this theory also explain itself and the development of the theory in the scientific community? If materialism is consistent it must claim that the possibility of having a theory of matter must itself be a property of matter. Matter must be conscious of itself. And this claim is not unusual.
But here the air is getting thin. Language starts to bewitch us. Flies get trapped in the fly bottle, to use Wittgenstein's metaphor. We say that consciousness of matter is an emergent property of matter. But what does this mean? Nothing. Language stands still. If we do not have a material mechanism connecting matter to consciousness of matter, we have not said anything. And here all bridges break down. We have no idea of what kind of a mechanism could connect those conceptually incompatible categories to build a unified, materialistic theory of everything. And this is not due to our lack of insight. It is due to the nature of reality.
Trying to explain consciousness by its objects is like Münchhausen trying to lift himself from his hair. Or, as Wittgenstein says in Tractatus, a function cannot be its own argument. We are the function, the world is the argument.
We need not speak about substances. We should only speak about the ontological structure of reality, the structure of our being in the world. And the basic structure is: the subject is conscious of the world. After seeing this triadic structure we should start analyzing each of those three components and the relations between them. And this is philosophy, not science. Science does a good job inside its own territory, but unreflective as it is, it does not always see that it has crossed its limits and has come to a dead end.
Does this theory also explain itself and the development of the theory in the scientific community? If materialism is consistent it must claim that the possibility of having a theory of matter must itself be a property of matter. Matter must be conscious of itself. And this claim is not unusual.
But here the air is getting thin. Language starts to bewitch us. Flies get trapped in the fly bottle, to use Wittgenstein's metaphor. We say that consciousness of matter is an emergent property of matter. But what does this mean? Nothing. Language stands still. If we do not have a material mechanism connecting matter to consciousness of matter, we have not said anything. And here all bridges break down. We have no idea of what kind of a mechanism could connect those conceptually incompatible categories to build a unified, materialistic theory of everything. And this is not due to our lack of insight. It is due to the nature of reality.
Trying to explain consciousness by its objects is like Münchhausen trying to lift himself from his hair. Or, as Wittgenstein says in Tractatus, a function cannot be its own argument. We are the function, the world is the argument.
We need not speak about substances. We should only speak about the ontological structure of reality, the structure of our being in the world. And the basic structure is: the subject is conscious of the world. After seeing this triadic structure we should start analyzing each of those three components and the relations between them. And this is philosophy, not science. Science does a good job inside its own territory, but unreflective as it is, it does not always see that it has crossed its limits and has come to a dead end.
Science
works well on its own territory, and a unified science based on
physicalism and materialism is a theoretical possibility, as long as
it does not cross its limits and start speaking about consciousness
as a property of matter, for instance.
I agree
that it is difficult to imagine a disembodied consciousness. I also
agree that consciousness needs a living body. This does not mean,
however, that consciousness can be reduced to material, neurological
phenomena. Correlations and material connections are totally
different things.
What
makes consciousness so peculiar that it cannot be handled with
empirical physicalistic science? It is the fact that consciousness is
always my consciousness, whoever that 'I' happens to be.
Consciousness is private, although accessible in others by language
and other behavior. Therefore we need an additional component to
really understand what consciousness is: the subject. The subject is
transcendental. It is like a point or an empty table, a “nothingness”
that gets its content with my being in the world, or my being
conscious of the world. But it is always already there along with its
content, and without it there would be nothing, literally, although
it has no independent being outside of its being conscious of the
world. So the ontological structure of reality is not “only matter”
or “mind and matter” but “the subject conscious of the world”.
But we must not interpret this structure as three different
substances. It is a concrete totality, and none of its components can
be removed without destroying all.
When we
speak about emerging properties we mean something like water
molecules arranging in a certain way so that we have ice instead of
liquid water. All this happens on the physical level. But
experiencing is something totally different. It is true, of course,
that experiencing presupposes certain kinds of neural
interconnections, but to say that certain experiences emerge from
certain kinds of neural connections is not, in my opinion, the right
way of seeing the situation. Experiences are subjective. They
presuppose the experiencing subject. They do not emerge from neural
networks without the being of the subject, perhaps even creating the
subject at the same time. No, the being of the subject is fundamental
for there being experiences and their objects. Experiences and brain
events are on conceptually different ontological levels, and no kind
of emerging can happen here if we do not define emergence in a new
way.
My
point is that experiencing is not an accident of nature or existence.
It is a necessary component of the subject's being in the world. The
subject is something we cannot get rid of, without it there would be
nothing, which would be self-contradictory. The being of the world is
necessary as well, because existence means being related to the
world. And experiencing or consciousness is the subjective side of
this relation, the body being its objective side. So there is nothing
accidental in the basic structure of reality that constitutes our
existence. And there is nothing but our existence if we think about
it thoroughly. So "I am experiencing the world" is where
all roads of being lead in the end. Someone might say that they lead
to death, but that does not change anything.
I do
not want to separate the brain from consciousness on the functional
level. I think there is a complete correspondence between them. In
fact they are only two sides of the same relation that the subject
has to the world. So of course drugs have an effect on consciousness.
And we can indeed speak about causality here, if we define causality
as the same thing always happening in the same conditions. But mind
and matter are on totally different ontological levels, so that
consciousness cannot be an emergent property of the brain in any
material sense.
Someone may look at this from a materialist point of view and think that although consciousness is ontologically on a different level than the brain, it is not a necessary phenomenon if we think about reality in general. It only emerges accidentally from matter, though not being matter itself. Here I have a different standpoint. I say that consciousness does not emerge from matter, it emerges - if we want to use that word - using matter, for the subject. So the subject is always there already from the beginning, and being itself transcendental, with no empirical content, it gets its concrete existence in consciousness of the world. So consciousness changes and evolves, being vague in the beginning and becoming sharper as the child grows. But the subject, which is the precondition of consciousness, and for which there is consciousness of the world, is always the same, because there is nothing in it which could change. It is the permanent reference point of our being in the world, it is me and it is you, here and now. It is the present abstracted from its content, and the being of its present content is the basic element of subjective time.
This is why speaking of emergence leads astray. The subject does not emerge from anything, consciousness emerges for the subject as it is in the world, being conscious of it and doing things with it.
For me experience and consciousness are synonyms. They presuppose the subject and subjective time for their being.
I also think that the 'I am' that Descartes detected was in fact the very same metaphysical subject which I have written about, also appealing to Wittgenstein. Descartes only misinterpreted it as some kind of soul-substance, res cogitans. The subject is no kind of substance, nor is consciousness. They are basic components of the subject-object relation, on the subjective side.
Someone may look at this from a materialist point of view and think that although consciousness is ontologically on a different level than the brain, it is not a necessary phenomenon if we think about reality in general. It only emerges accidentally from matter, though not being matter itself. Here I have a different standpoint. I say that consciousness does not emerge from matter, it emerges - if we want to use that word - using matter, for the subject. So the subject is always there already from the beginning, and being itself transcendental, with no empirical content, it gets its concrete existence in consciousness of the world. So consciousness changes and evolves, being vague in the beginning and becoming sharper as the child grows. But the subject, which is the precondition of consciousness, and for which there is consciousness of the world, is always the same, because there is nothing in it which could change. It is the permanent reference point of our being in the world, it is me and it is you, here and now. It is the present abstracted from its content, and the being of its present content is the basic element of subjective time.
This is why speaking of emergence leads astray. The subject does not emerge from anything, consciousness emerges for the subject as it is in the world, being conscious of it and doing things with it.
For me experience and consciousness are synonyms. They presuppose the subject and subjective time for their being.
I also think that the 'I am' that Descartes detected was in fact the very same metaphysical subject which I have written about, also appealing to Wittgenstein. Descartes only misinterpreted it as some kind of soul-substance, res cogitans. The subject is no kind of substance, nor is consciousness. They are basic components of the subject-object relation, on the subjective side.
The
whole idea of the generic subjective continuity is seeing the
absurdity of the thought that when we die, we pass into
nothingness, and that there is such a thing as nothingness.
But there is no such thing. There is only the last experience of
someone and the first experience of someone else, and nothing between
them. This is the only way we can speak of 'nothing'.
Let us
suppose there is nothing. I really think there is nothing, because
that is the most simple and stable state of affairs there can be: the
lack of all states of affairs. Why should there be anything?
So I think there is nothing. Therefore, there is at least this 'thinking of nothing'. Now we have 'nothing' and 'thinking of nothing', subject and object. This subject is the one I have called the transcendental or metaphysical subject, or shortly 'the subject'.
What is this object we call 'nothing'? It can only be myself, because it is nothing, and there is no other 'nothing' than me, the subject. So there appears an individual subject, me, and another individual subject, 'an other', which is nothing but myself as an object. There has arisen the subject-object relation, which constitutes the basic ontological structure of reality. And this relation is expressed concretely as the universe. So the universe is my relation to myself realized by the medium of matter.
We can continue this dialectic by analyzing subjective time and eventually coming to generic subjective continuity, but because I have written about it elsewhere, I think it should not be difficult for the reader to complete the picture.
So there is nothing, and this is what it means.
So I think there is nothing. Therefore, there is at least this 'thinking of nothing'. Now we have 'nothing' and 'thinking of nothing', subject and object. This subject is the one I have called the transcendental or metaphysical subject, or shortly 'the subject'.
What is this object we call 'nothing'? It can only be myself, because it is nothing, and there is no other 'nothing' than me, the subject. So there appears an individual subject, me, and another individual subject, 'an other', which is nothing but myself as an object. There has arisen the subject-object relation, which constitutes the basic ontological structure of reality. And this relation is expressed concretely as the universe. So the universe is my relation to myself realized by the medium of matter.
We can continue this dialectic by analyzing subjective time and eventually coming to generic subjective continuity, but because I have written about it elsewhere, I think it should not be difficult for the reader to complete the picture.
So there is nothing, and this is what it means.
The
term 'soul' usually refers to some kind of a substance, as was the
case with Descartes. I do not share his view on this. What he really
invented was the transcendental subject, later adopted by
Kant, Husserl et al. The subject and its consciousness need no
explanation. The subject is always already there along with the birth
of consciousness. It is fundamental, like matter is fundamental. But
this is not dualism in the sense of two substances. What is
fundamental is the basic structure: (1) the subject is (2) conscious
of (3) the world, by being in the world, doing things with the
objects of the world, by means of its body.
In short: the subject cannot be eliminated, we cannot get rid of ourselves as experiencing subjects. The being of the universe is much more of a problem than the being of subjectivity.
In short: the subject cannot be eliminated, we cannot get rid of ourselves as experiencing subjects. The being of the universe is much more of a problem than the being of subjectivity.
What is
the primus motor of there being any brains, or the material
world in general? My thesis is that the reason of the being of the
world lies in the subject and its evolution towards some kind of
balance or satisfaction, and this evolution is evolution of
consciousness. So I think the universe has a telos, a purpose,
that makes it rational. Perhaps this purpose is only a diversity of
consciousness, perhaps it is something more, but a universe without
subjectivity and its consciousness is impossible. Meaning is inherent
in the world. So subjects are not waiting to attach to a brain, but
subjectivity creates brains for its concrete existence as individual
subjects. This does not mean, however, that the subject must be an
active agent, only that the material world is there for the subject
and works in accordance with its laws and logic to make consciousness
real.
To an
imaginary opponent:
Do you
think the sense of self is the self, i.e. what 'I'
refers to? Who has the sense of self? What is the Cartesian 'I am'?
You say that experiential states are inherently first person, but I
think you do not take this seriously enough. As if the first person
could just emerge from something non-personal, like the brain, or
from experiential states that are also non-personal. So that there
would be no other difference between a subject and a stone than the
fact that the subject has experiences and a sense of self but the
stone has not. And the experiences and the sense of self are
non-personal like the color of a stone. Or what is it that makes them
"first person"? Isn't that the whole point?
So you seem to think that two subjects are totally separate, they have two separate selves, two I's. And 'I' denotes all the individual subjects separately. And there is therefore nothing that unites those individual subjects, making them us. Or what do you think makes them us?
That is one possible way of seeing the ontology of mind, but it does not satisfy me, because it does not answer our most crucial existential questions. I think the subject is what unites all of us. We are all manifestations of one and the same subjectivity. Here I also refer to the hypothesis called 'Generic Subjective Continuity', which I find is in exact agreement with my own views.
So you seem to think that two subjects are totally separate, they have two separate selves, two I's. And 'I' denotes all the individual subjects separately. And there is therefore nothing that unites those individual subjects, making them us. Or what do you think makes them us?
That is one possible way of seeing the ontology of mind, but it does not satisfy me, because it does not answer our most crucial existential questions. I think the subject is what unites all of us. We are all manifestations of one and the same subjectivity. Here I also refer to the hypothesis called 'Generic Subjective Continuity', which I find is in exact agreement with my own views.
So you
think we all have our own streams of subjective time? For me that
does not seem plausible. I think there is only one stream, and we are
all fragments of it, manifestations of one and the same subjectivity,
the same 'I'. I also do not believe in memory or causation between
successive lives. But the problem in this scenario is, of course, the
relation between subjective time and physical spacetime.
A
strong argument for the hypothesis of Generic Subjective Continuity,
or something like it, is this: The cosmic and biological evolution
generates perhaps an infinite number of conscious organisms,
individual subjects. Why do I happen to be this particular organism
and not any of the others? And is it possible that I would be none of
the organisms, but there would still be an infinite number of
subjects? That I would not exist, but others would exist. Wouldn't
that be "a bit" strange? Again, what does 'I' denote?
I am
not a mechanism. I use mechanisms for my existence, intentionally or
not. Mechanisms work for me. 'I' denotes, or refers to, something
much deeper, something fundamental, something without which there
cannot be anything at all. And this is true of us all, everyone's I.
It is one and the same I, only separated by subjective time, which is
"transpersonal" and has no end.
That there are several I's seems to be a natural state of affairs, but is in fact paradoxical and in the end self-contradictory. That there is only one I seems nonsense at first, but is in fact very consistent if you think of it thoroughly.
That there are several I's seems to be a natural state of affairs, but is in fact paradoxical and in the end self-contradictory. That there is only one I seems nonsense at first, but is in fact very consistent if you think of it thoroughly.
If we
see the universe as a spatio-temporal totality, there cannot be a
universe where I do not exist. And 'I' denotes here, as always,
anyone of us, the "being there" that connects all of us as
successive fragments of one and the same stream of experiences.
All my
"dialectic" is based on the fundamental nature of
subjectivity. But the I is not a thing, it is only the necessary
reference point of all being whatsoever. We should not reify it.
I
"confuse" the two senses of 'object' deliberately. I think
the subject-object relation is ontological, and there really cannot
be a world without subjectivity, i.e. without someone who has
experiences of the world. And we are all participants in this
subjectivity.
All this leads to the conclusion that nothingness is impossible. I am not sure if this is formally true, in terms of formal logic, but I think it is true as a phenomenological intuition.
All this leads to the conclusion that nothingness is impossible. I am not sure if this is formally true, in terms of formal logic, but I think it is true as a phenomenological intuition.
I
thought for some time that the insight of Descartes was trivial, and
that he only found that he is the subject of his own thoughts and his
own thinking. But now I am beginning to understand that what he
really detected, perhaps not really seeing it himself clearly enough,
was the subject of all objects, a precondition of the being of
"things in themselves". So his insight was genuinely
ontological, and it was later adopted by Kant, Husserl and others who
developed it in their analysis of subjectivity and its relation to
the objective world, also known as nature.
Although
the world is independent of my personal existence, its being depends
on the being of subjectivity in general, so that there must be
someone or something experiencing the world so that we can
meaningfully speak of the world at all. So the basic subject-object
relation is genuinely ontological, so that the being of the subject
depends on the being of the world and the being of the world depends
on the being of the subject. And by 'the subject' I mean subjectivity
in general, so that there must be at least one experiencing subject
in our universe. What is the relation of subjectivity to individual
subjects is another question.
In the
same way as an embryo has no subjective experiences in the early
stages of its development, the cosmic evolution of the universe had
no conscious organisms at its early stages, but its evolution is
nevertheless essentially evolution of consciousness, i.e. a process
generating consciousness. So it is teleological in this sense, in the
same way as the growing of a child is teleological, a
physical-temporal totality with consciousness as its essence.
What I
am suggesting is that this is not really a logical conclusion but a
phenomenological intuition of the nature of the subject, its
ontological status in our reality. Descartes saw a little deeper than
others, starting the tradition of reflective thinking.
My
point is that the being of the subject does not need an explanation.
Philosophy must begin from somewhere, and for me subjectivity is a
natural starting point, because it is something we cannot doubt, as
Descartes concluded, and what philosophers like Kant and Husserl
later adopted as their points of departure.
A bat
probably does not have the ability to reflect on its self, but I
think it nevertheless has - or is - a self. Every experiencing
subject is a self if it has temporal existence in subjective time.
Therefore a stone does not have a self. But what is the external mark
of subjectivity, I do not know. I know you are a subject, and I think
a bat is a subject, but where is the dividing line?
As I
understand this hypothesis it is indeed a combination of solipsism
and subjective continuity or transmigration, and this makes it
something that is almost beyond the possibilities of language. We are
extremely alone with it, although I and others have tried to
communicate something about it. Language can only make sense in the
world of others, and now there are no others. Or: there seemingly are
others, and here language works, but where otherness is seen as an
illusion, language stops working or becomes sort of poetry, full of
paradoxes. If you really get the point of this theory, seeing what it
means concretely for the relations between us, who the others are for
instance, who you are from my perspective, who I am from your
perspective, you must be somewhat embarrassed seeing all this.
Embarrassment is in fact the criterion for someone understanding
Generic Subjective Continuity, as I see it.
To draw back a bit: others are very real, but they play two roles. This is a version of solipsism that does not deny the existence of others.
To draw back a bit: others are very real, but they play two roles. This is a version of solipsism that does not deny the existence of others.
This is
important: the subject is not a thing. Things have external
properties, the subject has not. That is why I and others call it
transcendental. Descartes did not see it that way, but Kant, Husserl
and the phenomenological tradition did and took it as their starting
point.
We have
to invent some concepts for metaphysics, and they cannot be accurate
because they are not scientific. They try to be descriptive,
sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. I am not sure if 'subjectivity'
says what it wants to say, but I have not found a better word so far.
These kinds of concepts work only if the context is understood.
The
evidence is there before our eyes, and I think I have followed it as
well as I can. It is a question of interpreting the evidence, because
we are making ontological hypotheses, not scientific.
Why do
I choose the subject as the starting point for philosophy? Why is
subjectivity the absolute, the being of which needs no explaining?
Why must philosophy be reflective and study the a priori structures
of subjectivity?
Try to imagine that there is no you experiencing the world. Then try to imagine that there is no one experiencing the world. But there is still the world, isn't there? What does it matter if there are no subjects experiencing the world as long as there is the world? I wonder if there is someone who does not see the absurdity of this "reasoning". I cannot see the slightest bit of meaning in this. And what is absurd as a result of reductio ad absurdum cannot be the case.
So there is always the subject, and there is always me, in this case the philosopher who has found the absolute to start with. And the philosopher can make false conclusions, but stands on solid ground, making new starts when needed.
To sum up: the being of subjectivity does not need an explanation because there is nothing more fundamental which could explain its being. But the self-evidence of its being can be understood in a phenomenological intuition, and this should not be too difficult if we only remember to look close enough.
Try to imagine that there is no you experiencing the world. Then try to imagine that there is no one experiencing the world. But there is still the world, isn't there? What does it matter if there are no subjects experiencing the world as long as there is the world? I wonder if there is someone who does not see the absurdity of this "reasoning". I cannot see the slightest bit of meaning in this. And what is absurd as a result of reductio ad absurdum cannot be the case.
So there is always the subject, and there is always me, in this case the philosopher who has found the absolute to start with. And the philosopher can make false conclusions, but stands on solid ground, making new starts when needed.
To sum up: the being of subjectivity does not need an explanation because there is nothing more fundamental which could explain its being. But the self-evidence of its being can be understood in a phenomenological intuition, and this should not be too difficult if we only remember to look close enough.
I see
the universe as a spatio-temporal totality where there are many
places and many periods of time with no consciousness around. The
cosmic evolution, as I see it, is essentially evolution of
consciousness. And much has to happen in the evolution of matter
before the first sparkle of awareness appears.
You
say: My body generates consciousness for the subject. The subject can
be identified with the body, or is closely connected with it.
Therefore the subject is always an individual subject, connected with
a particular body. Each of us is a separate subject in this sense.
I say: My body generates consciousness for the subject. But I just happen to have this particular body and this kind of consciousness. I could be anyone, with anyone's body and consciousness. The subject is fundamental and universal: the subject is not the body, the body is the subject's body and it only happens to be this particular body with this particular kind of consciousness at the moment. The subject transcends its concrete individual being.
I say: My body generates consciousness for the subject. But I just happen to have this particular body and this kind of consciousness. I could be anyone, with anyone's body and consciousness. The subject is fundamental and universal: the subject is not the body, the body is the subject's body and it only happens to be this particular body with this particular kind of consciousness at the moment. The subject transcends its concrete individual being.
The
theory of Generic Subjective Continuity (GSC) raises the question
about the relation between subjective time and physical time. There
can be millions of years of physical time between two successive
experiences. The next question is: can subjective time jump to the
physical past? I think GSC demands this possibility. And this leads
to apparent paradoxes like this: I can kill someone who is in my
subjective past. This means that I have no choice: I do what I have
to do, because it has already happened. There is no logical
contradiction here, though. But for reasons like this the hypothesis
has its weaknesses, although it is also very powerful and consistent
in other respects.
The
being of subjects depends on the being of matter, and also the being
of subjectivity depends on the being of matter, in the form of
individual subjects. And they have indeed evolved out of pre-existing
matter, using matter for their evolution. And time has a lot to do
with evolution, but we cannot appeal to the early phases of the
universe to deny the fundamental nature of subjectivity.
The
cosmic evolution is essentially evolution of consciousness, and
consciousness, or subjectivity, is also the primus motor of
that evolution. So we must assume that there is some kind of a
teleological principle involved, which makes the universe the
totality I have claimed it to be. So the early phases of this
evolution are only the preliminary part for the making of conscious
subjects. So it is perhaps misleading to say that consciousness
evolved from matter, because it really evolved by using
matter, or if we want to avoid assuming an active agent, by the
material world's evolving for its appearing to existence.
Subjectivity
is really the most basic irreducible - but not stuff. And it does not
need an explanation, and it cannot be explained, only understood by
intuition. Another question is why matter is needed for the being of
consciousness, but that is a separate question. And as I have said,
matter can be seen as an instrument for the being of consciousness.
Only in this sense does it evolve "from" matter.
The
subject is ontologically fundamental, because there cannot be
anything without it. Its being depends on matter, because it cannot
concretely exist without a material basis. So subjectivity and matter
are equiprimordial, one cannot be without the other. It is perhaps a
bit misleading to say that the subject "uses" matter, a
better expression would be: matter evolves for the subject to
create the subject's concrete relation to the world through
consciousness. The material universe as a totality can be thought of
as an instrument for consciousness to arise and evolve.
So subjectivity is ontologically fundamental but is functionally dependent on matter.
So subjectivity is ontologically fundamental but is functionally dependent on matter.
There
is a distinction between the present in subjective time abstracted
from its content, and the present with its content referring to
earlier contents, which makes me an individual, a project called
'Markku Tamminen', with these memories and this body. When there is
no such reference, I am someone else.
Look at
it this way: The concrete reality is not the world, it is your being
in the world. If there is no world, there is no you. If there is no
you, there is no world. By 'you' I do not mean you as NN but anyone
experiencing the world, because the being of the world does not
depend on the existence of any particular individual subject. This
is, of course, an anti-materialist position, and needs some
metaphysics to support it, for instance the hypothesis of Generic
Subjective Continuity.
The
problem seems to be: what causes what, what is fundamental and what
must be explained. The universe can be seen as a spatio-temporal
totality with consciousness as its essence. There cannot be a
universe without consciousness if we think of the universe as a
totality. And the being and origin of consciousness needs no
explanation because of this original structure of reality. Therefore
the basic components and laws of physics must be such that there can
be conscious organisms. The reason for the fact that matter is such
as it is, is therefore the fundamental nature of consciousness. But
matter is necessary for the being of consciousness, and matter
evolves according to the laws of physics. We cannot think without
brains. Now what causes what? There are two kinds of causes: reasons
and physical mechanisms. My thesis is that the universe must be
rational because it is essentially inhabited, made of conscious
organisms that give it its meaning and reason for being, and also the
laws of physics, the properties of elementary particles and their
interactions and so on, belong to this rationality. In this sense I
agree with Hegel who said that what is real is rational.
I admit
that my view presupposes some kind of a teleological principle, but
if we see the universe as a totality, it does not matter if there are
times and places within it that contain no traces of consciousness as
long as consciousness comes true in its proper place and time. As if
have said, an embryo in its early development is not conscious, but
its essence as a fully developed adult is consciousness. The same can
be said of the universe as a whole. And this has nothing to do with
panpsychism. This is my metaphysical "hypothesis" and it is
in full agreement with scientific facts.
In fact
we cannot say anything at all about a subjectless world, about its
being or non-being. We cannot even touch the question. For every time
we try to touch it, we find that we have not touched that
question. We cannot jump beyond our being inside the world to posit
its independent existence. We have no justification to posit its
possibility. We cannot extrapolate from a world where we exist to a
world where we do not exist.
And by 'we' I mean the subject, whoever or whatever it happens to be.
And by 'we' I mean the subject, whoever or whatever it happens to be.
Physics
describes in a logically consistent way how nature appears to us, the
objective side of the subject-object relation. It puts the subjective
side into "brackets". It does not need it. It advances
unreflectively, blindly, and makes amazing progress. Now it is very
natural to think that what it has found is a world that needs no
subjects around, watching that world. But it has forgotten where it
all started from: the world appearing to us. If we forget the
appearing, the world becomes an abstraction. It vanishes into
nothingness, all of it at once. It ceases to exist in the same way as
Wittgenstein says the world ceases to exist when we die. But
fortunately the world does not vanish away, because there are
subjects to witness its existence.
If there were any sense of speaking of nothingness, it would mean lack of subjectivity. But neither of them has any sense.
If there were any sense of speaking of nothingness, it would mean lack of subjectivity. But neither of them has any sense.
I think
matter creates organisms but not subjects. Material organisms are the
subject's organisms for being. The subject cannot exist concretely
without the material basis of its body. But the subject is not a
property of matter, it is something we cannot eliminate from the
picture or reduce to anything if we think of the ontological
structure of reality. The subject has its own inner logic that has
something to do with the meaning of being in general. It may be, for
instance, to make being transparent to itself. So the subject has
enormous power: it is the primus motor of this amazing and
mysterious universe that would look "superfluous" (to quote
Sartre) without the reflective point of view that subjectivity gives
for our understanding. It makes the world rational. And the world
with no sense makes no sense.
Every individual subject is a manifestation of the subject in the ontological meaning of the term, or subjectivity, which is perhaps a better term because it does not as easily get confused with the empirical, individual subject identifiable by a proper name.
So there are no souls floating around in a spiritual universe. There is only matter of which the subject is conscious by being concretely in the material world, doing things with the environment, living where it happens to be "thrown in", with its body and intellect. There is nothing supernatural in our existence, we must only see the subject in us. It is so close that only few seem to find it, which surprises me.
Every individual subject is a manifestation of the subject in the ontological meaning of the term, or subjectivity, which is perhaps a better term because it does not as easily get confused with the empirical, individual subject identifiable by a proper name.
So there are no souls floating around in a spiritual universe. There is only matter of which the subject is conscious by being concretely in the material world, doing things with the environment, living where it happens to be "thrown in", with its body and intellect. There is nothing supernatural in our existence, we must only see the subject in us. It is so close that only few seem to find it, which surprises me.
The
existing subject is the absolute. There is nothing else. If it ceases
to exist, there is nothing. But nothingness is a contradiction in
terms. So the subject is eternal. It only changes its way of
manifesting itself. The subject is the eternal present of subjective
time. The content of its present is its consciousness of the world.
It is always at some particular spot in physical spacetime, living
physically and intellectually, in a relation to the world,
consciousness being the subjective side of that relation, and the
body being its objective, material side, located in spacetime.
But how can it be that the whole material world, starting with the big bang, belongs to the structure of the subject? On the other hand: how could it be otherwise? For the universe is the objective side of the basic subject-object relation, and if there were no subject, there would be no object either, no universe.
We forget who we are. We underestimate the meaning of our existence and do not see the absolute nature of the first person point of view. As Wittgenstein says in his Notebooks 1914-1916: "The I, the I, is what is deeply mysterious." And in Tractatus he introduced the concept of the metaphysical I. Which is roughly what I am proposing here.
But how can it be that the whole material world, starting with the big bang, belongs to the structure of the subject? On the other hand: how could it be otherwise? For the universe is the objective side of the basic subject-object relation, and if there were no subject, there would be no object either, no universe.
We forget who we are. We underestimate the meaning of our existence and do not see the absolute nature of the first person point of view. As Wittgenstein says in his Notebooks 1914-1916: "The I, the I, is what is deeply mysterious." And in Tractatus he introduced the concept of the metaphysical I. Which is roughly what I am proposing here.
According
to the Standard Model elementary particles like electrons and quarks
are extensionless. In fact the whole concept of extension seems to
lose its meaning in this context.
My ontological "concept" of subjectivity has nothing to do with either material or spiritual points. The term 'point' that I have sometimes used is only metaphorical, like in the case of Wittgenstein.
My ontological "concept" of subjectivity has nothing to do with either material or spiritual points. The term 'point' that I have sometimes used is only metaphorical, like in the case of Wittgenstein.
Individual
subjects are manifestations of subjectivity, as it is conscious of
the material world, being concretely in the world. So the being of
subjectivity is very closely and essentially related to matter, but
it is not itself a property of matter. It is always already there
along with the world, as a potentiality for existence, and the
ontological precondition for the being of anything at all. What makes
the identity of an individual subject is another question, and I
think it has something to do with the phenomenon of memory. And I
think what connects individuals to each other is subjectivity itself,
also called generic subjective continuity.
I trust empirical evidence and make ontological conclusions from them. Sometimes they do not look obvious to everyone. And it must be noted that among those pieces of empirical evidence are the facts of death and the existence of others.
I trust empirical evidence and make ontological conclusions from them. Sometimes they do not look obvious to everyone. And it must be noted that among those pieces of empirical evidence are the facts of death and the existence of others.
If by
'substance' we mean something that does not need anything else for
its being, then I do not think matter is substance, nor is
subjectivity. Spinoza said that substance is Nature or God, and
matter and mind are its attributes. I would say the unbreakable
subject-object relation is what can be called substance, but then we
can ask which one is the dominant part of this relation, the primus
motor of everything.
The
cosmic evolution produces complex structures like animal organisms
that have this strange property we call consciousness. Now we have
this “hard problem”: how can there emerge from the evolution of
matter something so fundamentally different, something that cannot be
described with the same set of concepts as material things? And what
is still more strange: this phenomenon is essentially connected to
the first person: it is the first person's point of view to the
world.
Now we come to the solution of the problem, and the solution is simpler than we thought. There is no hard problem: consciousness is the subject's way of being in relation to the material world. The material organism does not generate consciousness in a mysterious way, and the organism is not the material subject of that consciousness. If it were, there could not be any first person point of view. The material organism is such that it makes it possible for the subject to exist by offering the information needed for that purpose. But the subject is there already, letting the organism work for it and open the world for its existence.
And what is the subject then? It is nothing but the first person point of view. No substance, no soul, no spirit. Not even a point. It is each of us here and now: the present of subjective time abstracted from its content. We cannot define it by giving it properties any more than Heidegger could define Dasein. It defines itself by being in the world. It is “a hole in the universe”, as Sartre wrote.
And this hole in the universe is the reason for the being of the universe and everything there is. It is what some philosophers have called the Absolute.
Now we come to the solution of the problem, and the solution is simpler than we thought. There is no hard problem: consciousness is the subject's way of being in relation to the material world. The material organism does not generate consciousness in a mysterious way, and the organism is not the material subject of that consciousness. If it were, there could not be any first person point of view. The material organism is such that it makes it possible for the subject to exist by offering the information needed for that purpose. But the subject is there already, letting the organism work for it and open the world for its existence.
And what is the subject then? It is nothing but the first person point of view. No substance, no soul, no spirit. Not even a point. It is each of us here and now: the present of subjective time abstracted from its content. We cannot define it by giving it properties any more than Heidegger could define Dasein. It defines itself by being in the world. It is “a hole in the universe”, as Sartre wrote.
And this hole in the universe is the reason for the being of the universe and everything there is. It is what some philosophers have called the Absolute.
As I
said, the first person point of view is the absolute from which the
world opens up. It opens up as an individual project like 'Markku
Tamminen', but there is a temporal continuity in subjective time
between all the projects we call individuals. So the subject, or
subjectivity, is something that everything refers to. It is the
present that wanders through physical spacetime adopting all its
manifestations one after the other. The subject is eternal.
When I say: "Hey, I am here", you see a person whose name is perhaps Markku Tamminen, but for me this 'I' is the absolute that is always there as the precondition of everything. It only happens that it has now this manifestation with this body and these memories.
The connection between individual subjects is the difficult part of all this, and it needs some metaphysics to make sense of it. I have found that there are others who have thought about the same problems and developed a naturalistic theory called 'Generic Subjective Continuity'.
When I say: "Hey, I am here", you see a person whose name is perhaps Markku Tamminen, but for me this 'I' is the absolute that is always there as the precondition of everything. It only happens that it has now this manifestation with this body and these memories.
The connection between individual subjects is the difficult part of all this, and it needs some metaphysics to make sense of it. I have found that there are others who have thought about the same problems and developed a naturalistic theory called 'Generic Subjective Continuity'.
These
kinds of metaphysical hypotheses may seem unnecessary speculation,
but in fact they try to answer our basic existential and logical
questions: (1) My nonexistence means nothingness, and still there is
the world after my death; so what is death? (2) How is it possible
that there are experiences that I do not experience? Isn't that
against the whole concept of experience? An experience that I do not
experience seems to be as self-contradictory as an entity that does
not exist.
It seems that these are not relevant questions for most of us, but for me they are the most concrete existential questions. And they are questions about the very logic of our existence, not emotions arising from an existential crisis.
It seems that these are not relevant questions for most of us, but for me they are the most concrete existential questions. And they are questions about the very logic of our existence, not emotions arising from an existential crisis.
Just to
clarify the relation between subjectivity and an individual subject:
As I said, individual subjects are manifestations of subjectivity.
This means that we are all subjectivity's projects of existing. What
unites subjectivity's experiences so that they are the experiences of
Markku Tamminen, for instance, is what can be called an individual
subject. It is what makes the identity of an individual. It has
something to do with memory, and also has its material correlates,
especially the body as a whole. But we must make a phenomenological
analysis of the identity of an individual, including its material
correlates. I have only a preliminary and vague theory of it. I can
only say that it is something that stays the same as long as the
project lasts, something that ties our experiences together to make
us all separate individuals. And when we die, our individual subjects
vanish, because our projects have ended, but we cannot vanish as
subjectivity, because there is nothing in it that can vanish. The
present keeps on wandering in one form or another. The present is
eternal.
So we can say that each individual subject is subjectivity's way of making projects of existence, and the material world is the medium and instrument for realizing those projects.
So we can say that each individual subject is subjectivity's way of making projects of existence, and the material world is the medium and instrument for realizing those projects.
We must
sometimes use expressions that make no sense if not read in context.
What I call subjectivity is the continuity of experiencing, that
which connects individual subjects and makes them successive projects
in the common subjective time. This is a metaphysical hypothesis, but
it makes sense in its context. Subjectivity is not a person, it is
what unites and connects persons.
Suppose
there are two successive experiences in subjective time. Both of them
are experiences of an individual subject. If there is nothing in the
second experience that refers to the first, they are two separate
individual subjects, and if there is a reference relation, also known
as memory, between them, they belong to the same individual subject.
But what remains the same, connecting those experiences whether they
belong to the same individual or two separate individuals, is what I
have called subjectivity. It is the present experience continuing its
existence in varying forms and contents, crossing the borders we call
death. Death is forgetting. We all know what it is like to be dead,
we only do not remember our death. And how could we, for "if I
am, then death is not, if death is, then I am not"
(Epicurus).
So concepts that at first look abstract and do not seem to make sense become very concrete and understandable when seen as part of the whole picture. But we can always use more descriptive concepts if we find them. We must usually create new concepts when we do metaphysics, as was the case with Heidegger for instance. Understanding new ideas is difficult because people do not have the same horizon of thinking as the proponent of the idea has, after developing the idea alone for a long time. We have the problem of communication, and the dialog usually becomes a collection of parallel monologues that only touch each other here and there.
So concepts that at first look abstract and do not seem to make sense become very concrete and understandable when seen as part of the whole picture. But we can always use more descriptive concepts if we find them. We must usually create new concepts when we do metaphysics, as was the case with Heidegger for instance. Understanding new ideas is difficult because people do not have the same horizon of thinking as the proponent of the idea has, after developing the idea alone for a long time. We have the problem of communication, and the dialog usually becomes a collection of parallel monologues that only touch each other here and there.
I do
not know what possible worlds are, but I think consciousness is the
precondition of there being a world at all, if by 'world' we mean
everything there is, the totality of being. And a valid
counterargument is not, as is often suggested, that the universe was
not inhabited in the beginning.
There
is this phenomenological a priori truth: If I did not exist, there
would be nothing.
And then there is this empirical truth: If I did not exist, the world would exist without me.
The solution to this seeming paradox is that the 'I' in the first sentence denotes something else than the 'I' in the second sentence.
And then there is this empirical truth: If I did not exist, the world would exist without me.
The solution to this seeming paradox is that the 'I' in the first sentence denotes something else than the 'I' in the second sentence.
The
point is the paradox and its solution. The point is the meaning of
the myself.
If I did not exist, there would be something, not in itself, but for others.
If I did not exist, there would be something, not in itself, but for others.
I agree
that trying to solve the "hard problem" cannot lead
anywhere, because there is no hard problem. But I do not agree that
consciousness is something supernatural or supermundane. On the
contrary, it is the most natural and most mundane thing there is.
Consciousness needs no explanation or wondering, although we can
wonder our existence as such. Of course we experience things, how
else could it be? Of course we are conscious of something. The
philosophical problem is not the being of consciousness. The problem
is the being of what we are conscious of: the world, the universe,
matter etc. The object of philosophical analysis should be the
structure of consciousness, which means the structure of the subject.
The main components of this structure are subjective time, physical
space-time and the existence of others.
So what
is the relation between consciousness and matter?
Being means being conscious, experiencing something in the world. All other forms of being are somehow connected with the subject's being in the world. 'I am' is the ontological basis for everything. I am there with others in the material universe. I am a manifestation of subjectivity as an individual subject in the world of other individual subjects that are also manifestations of subjectivity. So I am in a symmetric relation with others: we share the same subjectivity, only our locations in physical space-time and subjective time differ.
Because others must be outside of myself, having a concrete existence, they must be material, and because of the symmetric relation between us I must also be material: we have bodies. Our bodies and the material universe between us are instruments for our being in the world as a community. Matter also makes it possible for us to exist at all, because existence is essentially being with others. The conclusion of all this is that matter is the instrument for subjectivity to exist concretely in the world, conscious of the world and others.
So matter is the functional basis of consciousness, but subjectivity is the ontological basis of the material world. Matter is my relation to others.
Being means being conscious, experiencing something in the world. All other forms of being are somehow connected with the subject's being in the world. 'I am' is the ontological basis for everything. I am there with others in the material universe. I am a manifestation of subjectivity as an individual subject in the world of other individual subjects that are also manifestations of subjectivity. So I am in a symmetric relation with others: we share the same subjectivity, only our locations in physical space-time and subjective time differ.
Because others must be outside of myself, having a concrete existence, they must be material, and because of the symmetric relation between us I must also be material: we have bodies. Our bodies and the material universe between us are instruments for our being in the world as a community. Matter also makes it possible for us to exist at all, because existence is essentially being with others. The conclusion of all this is that matter is the instrument for subjectivity to exist concretely in the world, conscious of the world and others.
So matter is the functional basis of consciousness, but subjectivity is the ontological basis of the material world. Matter is my relation to others.
'Something'
is a word, a concept, that denotes something, and for that something
to be there it must be possible to refer to it. There cannot be
"something" without someone or something for whom or for
what that something is. Something in itself does not make sense. It
escapes all thinking and imagination. There is always a subject for
an object if there is any meaning in saying that the object is.
Of course objects are there independent of any individual subject,
but not independent of some subject somewhere sometime in the
physical spacetime of our universe.
In short: If I did not exist, there would be nothing, which is absurd, and if there were no subjects, there would be nothing, which is absurd. So what explains the fact that everything is not absurd? The fundamental nature of the subject-object relation. Matter is not fundamental, because the being of matter in itself makes no sense phenomenologically. We cannot escape the ontological and methodological starting point of phenomenology: our immediate reality as it appears to us. To seek an explanation for the being of consciousness in the objects of consciousness by means of consciousness is a Münchhausen's trick and does not lead anywhere. Besides, we need no explanation, because consciousness is the subject's natural way of existing concretely in the world by being conscious of the world and doing things in the world. So the situation is much simpler than what it seems if we look at it from the materialistic point of view. That point of view leads to a dead end.
This is how I see the situation. We all have our own horizons of thinking, and it is difficult to change the horizon, especially when we speak of these kinds of deep questions. But I am always ready to try. I regard myself open to criticism if it is valid. However, I have thought about these things for a long time very intensively, and the basic insights that I had in my early adulthood have not changed, although they have of course got some concreteness and lead to new questions. But as I said, it is very difficult to try to understand another's horizon of thinking, and I think I have not succeeded to make myself understandable.
In short: If I did not exist, there would be nothing, which is absurd, and if there were no subjects, there would be nothing, which is absurd. So what explains the fact that everything is not absurd? The fundamental nature of the subject-object relation. Matter is not fundamental, because the being of matter in itself makes no sense phenomenologically. We cannot escape the ontological and methodological starting point of phenomenology: our immediate reality as it appears to us. To seek an explanation for the being of consciousness in the objects of consciousness by means of consciousness is a Münchhausen's trick and does not lead anywhere. Besides, we need no explanation, because consciousness is the subject's natural way of existing concretely in the world by being conscious of the world and doing things in the world. So the situation is much simpler than what it seems if we look at it from the materialistic point of view. That point of view leads to a dead end.
This is how I see the situation. We all have our own horizons of thinking, and it is difficult to change the horizon, especially when we speak of these kinds of deep questions. But I am always ready to try. I regard myself open to criticism if it is valid. However, I have thought about these things for a long time very intensively, and the basic insights that I had in my early adulthood have not changed, although they have of course got some concreteness and lead to new questions. But as I said, it is very difficult to try to understand another's horizon of thinking, and I think I have not succeeded to make myself understandable.
There
is a very common misunderstanding concerning the subject-object
interdependence. I need not see the object in order for it to be
dependent on my being, or the being of some subject. There only has
to be a subject somewhere at some spatiotemporal location and the
object somewhere in the same universe. And there is only this
universe. It can be seen as a totality of objects some of which are
also subjects. It is true that no one was there to witness the Big
Bang, but the Big Bang has nevertheless happened in the universe
where we observe things, and in the same universe where the dinosaurs
lived their lives. The universe is our universe and the universe of
the dinosaurs. There is no universe in itself.
Another remark: There are various ontological interpretations of empirical facts, but those interpretations are not arbitrary, so that we could say "anything goes". My interpretation solves the paradoxes of death and foreign minds, the mind-body problem and the hard problem of consciousness in a very simple and satisfactory way, without conflicting with science, but the materialistic interpretation does not solve any of these problems. The picture must be turned upside down, like Kant tried to do with his Copernican revolution. We must go beyond Kant.
Another remark: There are various ontological interpretations of empirical facts, but those interpretations are not arbitrary, so that we could say "anything goes". My interpretation solves the paradoxes of death and foreign minds, the mind-body problem and the hard problem of consciousness in a very simple and satisfactory way, without conflicting with science, but the materialistic interpretation does not solve any of these problems. The picture must be turned upside down, like Kant tried to do with his Copernican revolution. We must go beyond Kant.
I think
the universe is, metaphorically speaking, a huge organism with
consciousness as its essence and primus motor. It is the
subject's project for evolving towards clarity of consciousness and
transparency of being, much like I am conscious now although I was
not conscious when I was an embryo. The subject and the object need
not be simultaneously present.
The
being of the objects of thought is dependent on the being of an
individual subject, but the being of the "objects of being"
is not. However, the being of those objects is dependent on the the
fact that there are subjects whose world they belong to. I understand
that this is not obvious for everyone, but for me it is very clear.
The
problem with physical realism is the claim for the ontological
independence of the physical world. As I have said many times, the
being of the world in itself, without the being of a subject for
which the world exists, does not make sense to me. This nonsense
appears in a simple phenomenological intuition - for me at least.
Another intuition says to me that if I did not exist, there would be
nothing. This may seem counterintuitive, but I am sure it is because
you have left your meditations half-way. I assure you that it becomes
evident if you refuse to trust your first impression and take a
reflective attitude. And this is the insight that logically leads to
the metaphysics I have proposed: the theory of generic subjective
continuity, or subjective interpersonal continuity, which I have
found also some other philosophers seem to support. And this insight
with its consequences goes deep into our existential situation. It
opens up new horizons for philosophy. But there is this big problem
with it: when we understand what it really means, we also understand
that we cannot speak of it. It is beyond language.
I live
in the material world, experiencing it. This experiencing can be
thought of as a relation: the subject's relation to the objective
world. From the subject's point of view this relation is
consciousness of the world. But because the world is “out there”,
transcendent, there must be an objective, material side of this
relation, a sort of an interface to the world. This objective side of
my relation to the world is my body.
Now we have one relation and these two sides of it: mind and body. And because there is only one relation, these two sides refer to the same event and are in this sense identical, like two sides of the same coin, as someone has remarked. And therefore there must be a correspondence between their descriptions. But conceptually they are totally different, and there cannot be any conceptual bridge between them, so that we could explain the being of consciousness by the being of matter. Consciousness is fundamental, its being cannot be explained and need not be explained. It is the starting point of philosophy, and the point where we must always return if we get lost.
Now we have one relation and these two sides of it: mind and body. And because there is only one relation, these two sides refer to the same event and are in this sense identical, like two sides of the same coin, as someone has remarked. And therefore there must be a correspondence between their descriptions. But conceptually they are totally different, and there cannot be any conceptual bridge between them, so that we could explain the being of consciousness by the being of matter. Consciousness is fundamental, its being cannot be explained and need not be explained. It is the starting point of philosophy, and the point where we must always return if we get lost.
It is
not that the being of the physical world is dependent on mental
states, but it is dependent on the being of subjectivity in
general. Subjectivity cannot be eliminated in any description of
reality if it wants to be concrete and all-embracing. Everything
refers back to it. And as I have said, it need not be everywhere,
because an instrument for the concrete existence of subjectivity need
not be in the same place in physical spacetime as an individual
subject. And the instrument for the concrete being of subjectivity is
the universe itself, seen as a totality. So this implies some kind of
cosmic teleology. But an instrument is something else than an idea.
It is ”out there”, it has its objective being.
What is
it about consciousness that makes it dependent on matter? What does
it mean that there is matter? The being of consciousness seems to be
a problem for modern science, but not the being of matter. Why?
Reality
depends on the being of subjective experiences on the global
scale, not on a particular experience, not even the experiences of a
particular subject. Experiences are the essence of the world, its
telos and reason for being, and the real cause of the Big
Bang. Without them there would not have been even that singularity
from which all began, let alone its expanding to this marvelous home
for us. Being a home for us is its essence. The universe ”wanted”
inhabitants for its being, and we ”wanted” the universe for our
being. And both are satisfied, because our needs were fulfilled, but
not by some transcendent Other. Everything happened naturally,
according to the inner logic of being. Perhaps some day we will
understand that logic so that our existence becomes transparent and
the telos of the universe gets realized.
”Consciousness
is one of the manifestations of matter/energy.”
This is
a very strange thought, and I have always wondered its popularity in
modern science. How can one take as the starting point and basis for
philosophy something which is so far away from our immediate reality,
and try to explain by it something as close to us as consciousness,
which is there all the time, as a precondition of all our doings. How
can it be that the objects of science are the ontological basis for
the being of science? We cannot raise ourselves from our own hair.
For me this is so obvious that I think there must be some kind of
misunderstanding somewhere that I have not noticed. Maybe it is the
question of what is functionally fundamental and what is
ontologically fundamental.
We ask
how there can be consciousness given the being of matter, but we do
not ask how there can be matter given the being of consciousness.
Perhaps Berkeley did ask this, but I do not think his answer was
satisfactory. But I think the second question is less absurd than the
first one, because it is asked from the natural standpoint: our
immediate reality that we cannot escape, consciousness itself.
Consciousness can ask questions about its relation to things that it
is conscious of, asking if their being is necessary for its own
being, and if it is, why they must be such as they are. But it cannot
ask such questions on behalf of the things that it is conscious of,
trying to explain its own being by the facts of the world. It is
already there, before any questions are asked. Therefore no
explanations for its being are possible and no explanations for its
being are needed.
I think
subjective time has a beginning but no end, for reasons I have given
elsewhere. What is the relation between subjective time and physical
spacetime is the "hard problem" of generic subjective
continuity, if that hypothesis is true.
I see
subjective time as a series of successive experiences. If there is a
gap in physical time between two successive experiences, that gap is
not part of subjective time. Experiences are on/off phenomena: either
there is an experience or there is not. Also weak experiences are
experiences, as long as they belong to the continuity of subjective
time. This is an essential feature of subjective being.
About
'functionally fundamental' and 'ontologically fundamental': It is
indeed correct to say that I was created by matter. But why was I
created? Because I have to be! Whoever or whatever I am, I have to
exist. There is no physics, no logic, no being without the being of
the subject. This is what I mean by the instrumental nature of matter
and the being of the subject as ontologically fundamental. I cannot
escape my existence. Not even by dying.
Being is, non-being is not, and being is my being. "The world is my world", Wittgenstein said. But remember the double meaning of the 'I'.
Being is, non-being is not, and being is my being. "The world is my world", Wittgenstein said. But remember the double meaning of the 'I'.
This is
exactly what the mind/brain correspondence means: When I have a
phenomenal state A, I have a brain state X. If I change my brain
state to Y, my phenomenal state changes to B. If my phenomenal state
changes spontaneously to B, my brain state changes to Y. A and X are
descriptions of the same event in my relation to the world, but there
is nothing that conceptually connects those descriptions to each
other. When I see red, I see it in a phenomenal color space where
colors have phenomenal relations to each other. This has nothing to
do with the wave length of the photon that hits my retina and emits a
signal to my visual cortex. There is no redness in my brain.
Consciousness is a conceptually self-contained information system
that gets its raw data through its material interface to the world.
This interface is the body and its center is the brain.
To put
it short: I would say that mind and body are identical in the sense
that they are two conceptually incompatible perspectives to the
subject's relation to the world. But the subjective perspective,
consciousness, can never be ignored or explained by something else.
It is the key for understanding reality.
Consciousness
has a material basis for its being. But I think consciousness is
ontologically fundamental. Science starts with matter and does so
blindly, because matter is what we meet every day as we live in this
universe. And there is nothing wrong with that: science makes amazing
progress. But philosophy should have a reflective attitude to our
existence and start with our being in the world, not the world in
itself. And therefore its starting point should be our immediate
reality, consciousness. This is how I see the task of philosophy.
The
mind gets its information "through" the brain and makes a
consistent picture of the world out of that information. The
"geometrical" structure of the phenomenal world need not be
the same as that of the brain.
I have
understood that the "hard problem" is about how we can
conceptually fill the gap between a certain wave-length of a photon
and the phenomenal redness, for instance. So that we could in
principle explain phenomenal qualities by the standard model of
physics. I do not think anyone has solved this problem even in
principle, and I think it is a pseudo problem. If there is no
problem, there cannot be a solution.
We
should speak about brain processes or brain events, not brain states.
But on the phenomenal level the corresponding "events" are,
as I understand them, a series of experiential contents. "Redness"
is a content that corresponds to a certain kind of brain process.
That is why experiences are conceptually incompatible with brain
events. And this is why there is necessarily a problem with
physicalism.
If
brain processes and the corresponding mental contents are different
perspectives to the same thing, be it physical, mental or neutral, we
have solved the mind/body problem, but where is the "hard
problem" in this case? How to fill the conceptual gap?
Impossible. There is no hard problem.
In my
version of mind/brain identity it is in fact not correct to say that
the concepts of mental contents and brain processes denote the
same thing. They only refer to or are about the same
thing, the subject's relationship to the material world. But the
denotation of 'red', for instance, is totally different from the
denotation of the word for the corresponding brain process. The
levels of description are conceptually incompatible, although what
they describe is the same chain of events. And a composition of
physical attributes is physical, not mental. There is no bridge over
that river.
I claim
that mind/body identity cannot be found empirically or a priori, and
this can be seen a priori.
Because
there is a conceptual gap between mental contents and brain
processes, we cannot find an identity of them in the strict
physicalistic sense either empirically or a priori. Instead, we can
see a priori the kind of identity I am proposing.
What is
a substance? For Spinoza it is "something that needs nothing
else in order to exist or be conceived". If we take this
definition, matter is not substance, because it has no independent
existence, nor is consciousness or the subject, for the same reason.
What is the concrete reality is: (1) the subject is (2) conscious of
(3) the world. This ontological "trinity" is substance by
Spinoza's definition.
Spinoza
says that the mind is united to the body because the body is the
object of the mind, and the mind and the body are the same thing
conceived under two attributes: thought and extension. I think this
is closer to my views than to the physicalistic identity hypothesis.
If we
empirically find perfect correlation, is the hard problem solved and
the conceptual gap filled? How else can we claim that there is
psychophysical identity in the materialistic sense? No, we cannot
claim that there is identity in this sense even if there is a perfect
correspondence, one-to-one, between mental contents and brain
processes. Subjective concepts can be translated into physical
concepts, but subjective phenomena are not composed of physical
processes. A bricklayer can build a house from bricks, but not a
picture of a house.
Cosmic
evolution does not produce anything nonphysical from itself, but the
nonphysical is already there, as a component of the basic ontological
structure of reality: the subject's being in the universe by being
conscious of it. This structure is the essence of the universe, its
"form". All the basic components of physics already contain
the possibility, and perhaps the necessity, of building the necessary
material basis for the subject's consciousness of the world and
itself. And consciousness does not need to have anything that
conflicts with the causal continuity of the cosmic evolution. The
evolution happens for the subject, and consciousness is how the
subject experiences that evolution. Because consciousness is one of
the fundamental components of the ontological structure of reality,
none of which cannot be removed without destroying everything, it
cannot be identical with the brain physically, conceptually or
logically, although it refers to the same thing as the brain: the
subject's relationship to the material world.
Consciousness
has no functional role in evolution, because it is what evolution is
all about. It is the answer to the question 'why'. "Chance"
belongs to the way matter behaves in evolution. It is reducible to
the laws of physics. But evolution is not irrational, and the being
of consciousness makes it rational. But its rationality is internal
and natural, something that we will hopefully understand some day.
Explanations
must end somewhere, and their natural end station is consciousness.
We can try to explain the being of the universe, its objects and
inhabitants, the consciousnesses of other individual subjects, the
history of consciousness in the universe and so on, but we cannot
explain the being of consciousness itself, and we need not explain it
if we understand the necessity and self-evidence of its being.
Explanations
cannot be separated from explaining. Explaining presupposes the being
of consciousness. What explains the precondition of all explanations?
Consciousness
did not fall from the sky, nor is it a miracle. It is the most
natural phenomenon there is, so natural that nature itself looks like
a miracle compared to it. We can try to explain away miracles, but
not what miracles are for.
Of
course when I have a perception of a tree, this presupposes the being
of the tree, the being of certain brain processes and the being of
certain physical processes like electromagnetic radiation. So the
being of consciousness has a material basis. But the phenomenon for
which matter is a functional basis, consciousness, is not something
accidental that can be or not be. It is ontologically fundamental
although it only expresses itself here and there in the universe. We
must take a holistic view on this. And this is not a scientific
question, it is an ontological interpretation of scientific and
everyday observations.
When we try to explain consciousness by brain processes, we try to explain how consciousness is possible, but we cannot explain the fact that consciousness is, the fact that we are here as conscious beings.
When we try to explain consciousness by brain processes, we try to explain how consciousness is possible, but we cannot explain the fact that consciousness is, the fact that we are here as conscious beings.
There
are those who say that everything we meet in the world can be
described in physical language. But how about the meeting itself? We
meet the meeting itself in others, because they meet the world in the
same way as we meet the world. And we meet the meeting also in us as
we reflect on ourselves. In fact the basic relation we have to the
world is our meeting others through and by the physical world. The
physical world has an instrumental role in this relation. This
meeting cannot be described in physical language although it has
correlations with physical events. And this can be said a priori
if the basic structure of reality is such as I have described.
Asking
what consciousness is, is asking an empty question. We all know what
consciousness is. It is so self-evident that we would never recognize
it if there were no others. Only in others do we meet consciousness,
and through the others also in ourselves, by seeing that they are
like us. Otherness can in fact be seen as a synonym for
consciousness. Others are beings that we can imagine ourselves to
exist as. I cannot imagine myself being a stone, but I can imagine
myself being an ant. So consciousness is simpler than we think. No
scientific problem, no philosophical problem, if only we succeed not
to get trapped in the fly bottle, a thing often seen on a
philosopher's table.
The
experience of seeing consists of the appearing of a content of
consciousness we call perception. Reflecting on this content is
memory, and it produces another kind of content. So consciousness is
a succession of experiential contents, and this succession is called
subjective time.
What we
call consciousness is perhaps better described by Heidegger by his
“concept” of Dasein or by Sartre by his “concept” of
for-itself. 'Dasein' means literally 'being there', and the
physical world as “ready-to-hand” is part of Dasein's ontological
structure. For Sartre the physical world is “in-itself” and is
only co-existent with the “for-itself”. So if we combine those
two characterizations we can say that a being with consciousness is
there for itself. It exists, in the existential sense. And
this is all we can say about the “essence” of consciousness, in
spite of the 500 pages of Heidegger and 600 pages of Sartre. It must
be noted that neither of them had any intention to give a scientific
explanation of consciousness, nor did Wittgenstein or any of the
great philosophers, and I am sure this was not because they wanted to
deny the worth of science.
Science
can only find correlations between consciousness and material
processes, not identity in the sense of a common conceptual
framework. The language of consciousness can perhaps be translated
into the language of neuroscience, but a common language is
impossible because of the general structure of reality: the subject's
consciousness of the world. The first person point of view,
which is an essential feature of consciousness, makes it impossible
to speak of it in the same language as we speak of material
processes.
If it
were possible to create a common conceptual framework for
consciousness and physical processes, which I doubt, the natural
starting point would be consciousness and a phenomenological analysis
of our immediate reality. It would proceed from an a priori
basis and try to find out how the physical world necessarily appears
to consciousness and what it must be like to make the being of
consciousness possible and real. If we then find out something that
corresponds to the conceptual apparatus of modern physics, we are
close to the common language we are seeking. This is not an easy task
but theoretically possible, and surely more possible than the other
way round. And this approach has the advantage that it can possibly
show why there is such a phenomenon as matter or the physical world,
which from the materialistic perspective is a given but is in fact a
mystery. That consciousness is a given is not a problem. The being of
consciousness is not a mystery.
Physical
spacetime has a spatial component and a temporal component, but it
has no spatial presence in the sense of "here" and
no temporal present in the sense of "now". Only a
conscious organism has a spatiotemporal location in the universe
where it is "here and now". Therefore a subject's
consciousness of the world belongs to a totally different category
than matter, although matter belongs to its ontological
structure.
My body is here and now because I experience it. When I am dead, my body is not here and now. Matter has no presence.
If you could look at my body from a distance of a billion light years, you could not say what its "here and now" is, even if you could describe it accurately. My presence is not my body. I am not my body. My brain does not think. I think with my brain in the same sense as I see with my eyes.
Now someone perhaps suggests that the presence arises from physical presenceless spacetime as its emergent property, but that sounds absurd to me.
My body is here and now because I experience it. When I am dead, my body is not here and now. Matter has no presence.
If you could look at my body from a distance of a billion light years, you could not say what its "here and now" is, even if you could describe it accurately. My presence is not my body. I am not my body. My brain does not think. I think with my brain in the same sense as I see with my eyes.
Now someone perhaps suggests that the presence arises from physical presenceless spacetime as its emergent property, but that sounds absurd to me.
A cloud
is at location (x,y,z,t) but not here and now. I am here and now. You
have your own here and now that I can observe if I am close enough.
But the stone I am looking at has no presence of its own either in
the sense of 'here' or in the sense of 'now'. This makes us different
from stones and clouds.
I am
here and now. Yesterday I had yesterday's here and now. But the cloud
I am looking at has no 'here and now', and has never had any kind of
presence in the sense I am speaking of that fundamental phenomenon.
How can
matter have presence to itself? Other people have their own presence
of course.
There
are other people, you for instance. You have your presence but your
pen has only your presence. Just to clarify what I mean by
presence.
This is
what makes human history different from cosmic history: we speak of
projects and intentions rather than brain processes. "Alea
iacta est" refers to a decisive "here and now" of
Caesar.
What is
the "now" of a stone? It can only be defined in relation to
an observer, and if that observer is far from the stone, the "now"
of the stone cannot be defined, because it depends on the speed of
the observer in relation to the stone, and if there is no observer,
there is only the worldline of the stone without a "now"
and without a "here". But if the stone were conscious, it
would have its own succession of presences. This would be
panpsychism.
All this means that the identity hypothesis is false, and so is property dualism, because matter without presence cannot generate presences. We must turn the picture upside down.
We are not accidental phenomena in the barren universe. The universe is our universe, our home. It is the playground for our relations with each other. And by 'we' I mean all the subjects of the world, but not clouds or stones - or computers.
All this means that the identity hypothesis is false, and so is property dualism, because matter without presence cannot generate presences. We must turn the picture upside down.
We are not accidental phenomena in the barren universe. The universe is our universe, our home. It is the playground for our relations with each other. And by 'we' I mean all the subjects of the world, but not clouds or stones - or computers.
What
makes a conscious presence different from the "presence" of
a material object? A material object has a "presence" only
in relation to the genuine presence of an observer. In itself it has
no presence at all. It is the original situation of a conscious
being, and therefore it has no objective reference to anything
outside of it. It is what makes us different from our instruments and
the material objects in our universe. It is what makes us us.
I think
we are misusing the word 'here' if our phones say they are "here".
At least this is not the original meaning. And I am speaking of the
original meaning now. The phone is located at a place which is in
relation to the presence of its owner or the coordinate system we
have made. Without such a reference point no one could say at which
point of its worldline it is. And even if that were possible, it
would not be its presence, only its location.
It does
not really matter if my yesterday's presence was me or someone else.
What matters is whether the worldline is conscious or not, because
consciousness is essentially a succession of experiential contents or
presences in the original meaning of the term. What I am trying to
say is that conscious and non-conscious processes are radically
different.
A pen
has no presence.
Observing
distant conscious events means observing presences: intentions,
projects and so on. And these presences are fixed within themselves.
The objective "presence" of those events can only be
determined in relation to some arbitrary coordinate system.
I
reject the materialistic starting point which seems to be what many
philosophers have committed to without reflecting on this commitment.
My starting point is the subject's consciousness of the world, a kind
of a triadic structure from which none of the three components can be
removed.
I have
a location, or many locations, or a worldline, but also presence, and
my presence is something much more fundamental than my location. I
can be at location x or location y along my timeline seen from the
origo of a well-defined coordinate system, but at each point I am
also present if I am a conscious being. When I said that it does not
matter if I was someone else yesterday, I meant that a presence is a
presence independent of whose presence is in question, as long as it
is a conscious being. What makes the identity of an individual
subject is another question. So presence is always subjective,
whereas location is objective. But also the bodies of subjects have
their worldlines and locations on arbitrary reference frames.
I think we have more or less forgotten ourselves, our existence, and its fundamental role in the structure of reality. There is no universe in itself, independent of subjects. The universe is a community of subjects. The basic structure of reality is: (1) the subject's (2) consciousness of (3) the world. None of these three components can be removed without destroying everything. Of course the being of the world does not depend on the being of any individual subject, but it depends on the being of the community of subjects, without which the being of the world loses its meaning, reason of being and, if we think of it to the bitter end, its very being.
In the above structure the world is what we usually call nature, everything we meet around us and get to know by empirical means. Consciousness is what I have called 'presence' . It is always a subject's presence. Therefore it is also private, which is another of its essential properties. So what makes the being of a subject totally different from the being of a non-conscious object is that a subject is present and its being is private. But also private worlds can communicate with each other, as we all do all the time.
I think we have more or less forgotten ourselves, our existence, and its fundamental role in the structure of reality. There is no universe in itself, independent of subjects. The universe is a community of subjects. The basic structure of reality is: (1) the subject's (2) consciousness of (3) the world. None of these three components can be removed without destroying everything. Of course the being of the world does not depend on the being of any individual subject, but it depends on the being of the community of subjects, without which the being of the world loses its meaning, reason of being and, if we think of it to the bitter end, its very being.
In the above structure the world is what we usually call nature, everything we meet around us and get to know by empirical means. Consciousness is what I have called 'presence' . It is always a subject's presence. Therefore it is also private, which is another of its essential properties. So what makes the being of a subject totally different from the being of a non-conscious object is that a subject is present and its being is private. But also private worlds can communicate with each other, as we all do all the time.
A
conscious being has a location, which is not different from the
location of a non-conscious being, but it has also its own inner
presence, which is something altogether different.
Only
conscious beings are present in the double meaning of the word as
'here' and 'now'.
Non-conscious and conscious beings have a spatiotemporal location in relation to the presences of conscious beings.
You cannot apply the concept of 'presence' defined as 'here' and 'now' to your pen. Your pen has a location at your presence, but it has no presence of its own.
Non-conscious and conscious beings have a spatiotemporal location in relation to the presences of conscious beings.
You cannot apply the concept of 'presence' defined as 'here' and 'now' to your pen. Your pen has a location at your presence, but it has no presence of its own.
My standpoint is subjective, following the tradition from Descartes to Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and so on. None of them asked how the being of consciousness can be explained from the being of matter. They knew what consciousness is. And so do we all. We have only forgotten it.
A
subject indeed has a kind of a solipsistic relationship to the world,
but what I am saying is that if there is no single subject in the
universe, has never been and will never be, there is no sense and no
justification in saying that there is a universe at all.
1. The
worldline of my pen can only be defined by me or a community of
subjects in relation to some spatiotemporal coordinate system which
can also be defined only by subjects. Now my pen has a succession of
spatiotemporal locations on that worldline, each somewhere "there"
seen from my presence "here" and "now".
2. If my pen were conscious, it would be "here" and "now" at each of its locations, and those "heres" and "nows" would be different from my "here" and "now". It would be an other for me. My pen is not an other. It is my instrument. Another's presence is like my yesterday's presence if my personal continuity is ignored.
So it is impossible to eliminate the subject's presence, also called consciousness, from our view of reality, if that view wants to be something more than an abstraction.
2. If my pen were conscious, it would be "here" and "now" at each of its locations, and those "heres" and "nows" would be different from my "here" and "now". It would be an other for me. My pen is not an other. It is my instrument. Another's presence is like my yesterday's presence if my personal continuity is ignored.
So it is impossible to eliminate the subject's presence, also called consciousness, from our view of reality, if that view wants to be something more than an abstraction.
The
universe objectively existed before there were subjects, but the
universe exists and has always existed in relation to the subjects
there are, whenever those subjects happen to live. Without subjects
there can be no universe. Without subjects there can be nothing. The
universe is a spatiotemporal totality. Can you really imagine a
universe without subjects if you think about it deeper than in the
usual, superficial way?
The being of objects depends on the being of subjects, although not on the being of any individual subject. The concept of an object implies a relation which is not only epistemological but also ontological.
The being of objects depends on the being of subjects, although not on the being of any individual subject. The concept of an object implies a relation which is not only epistemological but also ontological.
The
subjects of the universe are also in relation to the subjectless past
of the universe like I am in relation to my unconscious past. I admit
that this idea may sound a bit strange, but think of it like the past
of the universe in a way only gets its existence with conscious
beings in the future because it evolves for the being of those
conscious beings. This is what I mean when I say that the universe is
a totality. And because this totality necessarily contains subjects,
it necessarily exists as a totality, including its subjectless past.
I am not sure if I can explain this clearly enough, but I hope some
day I'll find better words.
However, I find this view both consistent and obvious. It is something like Wittgenstein's remark about dying: if all subjects are removed, the world does not change, it only ceases to exist. So there are two kinds of possible annihilation of the world: destroying the world and destroying the subject.
However, I find this view both consistent and obvious. It is something like Wittgenstein's remark about dying: if all subjects are removed, the world does not change, it only ceases to exist. So there are two kinds of possible annihilation of the world: destroying the world and destroying the subject.
My
pen's relation to me is not the same kind of relation as my relation
to my pen. My finger's relation to my pen is the same kind of
relation as my pen's relation to me. There is a fundamental
difference between subjective and objective relations.
The
"here and now", or presence, is exactly what we mean by
consciousness, and if that presence is removed from the whole
universe, there is no justification of saying that the universe
exists.
To use
a simplified metaphor: the universe can be thought of as a "thing"
with consciousness as its essential property. Therefore the universe
cannot be thought of as being without consciousness. The being of
consciousness is the ontological precondition of existence in
general.
A
subjective viewpoint to an object does not necessarily make the
object subjective, it only makes its appearance subjective.
Each of us sees an object from a different perspective, but the
object itself remains the same. Also we have some common ways of
seeing things as Kant pointed out. But the noumenon is still
there.
So I am not denying the objective reality. I am denying the possibility that there can be any objective reality without there being the subjective reality as necessarily related with the objective reality. An object is objectively there, but it needs the being of some subject for its being objectively there.
So whenever there is a subject, it sees the same reality, but if there were no subjects, which is impossible, there would be nothing, which is impossible and self-contradictory.
Reality does not care how we see it, but we must be there to guarantee its being. This is also how Wittgenstein saw it: the "metaphysical" subject must be there as an ontological precondition of the being of the world, whatever the world happens to be like.
So I am not denying the objective reality. I am denying the possibility that there can be any objective reality without there being the subjective reality as necessarily related with the objective reality. An object is objectively there, but it needs the being of some subject for its being objectively there.
So whenever there is a subject, it sees the same reality, but if there were no subjects, which is impossible, there would be nothing, which is impossible and self-contradictory.
Reality does not care how we see it, but we must be there to guarantee its being. This is also how Wittgenstein saw it: the "metaphysical" subject must be there as an ontological precondition of the being of the world, whatever the world happens to be like.
In my
definition an ant may be a subject but a stone is not. A stone does
not see, for instance.
If two subjects see an apple in the same way so that they can agree on what it is like, this is not only because those subjects are similar but primarily because the apple appears to them in the same way, and it appears to them in the same way because it is the same apple with certain objective properties. What those properties are can only be studied with increasing accuracy, by science for instance. But here we come to the question of what is true and what is not. There can also be false appearances. So things are what they are, not other things. But the being of things depends on the being of subjects. However, it does not depend on the being of any individual subject. If an individual subject dies, there are other subjects that make the being of objects real. If all subjects were removed from the world, which is impossible, the world would not change much, it would only lose its existence. And it must be expressed this way, even if it looks paradoxical.
I have found that this distinction between the subject's role in defining the object and the role that the being of the subject has in the being of the object is very difficult to see. I think this goes beyond the Copernican revolution of Kant.
If two subjects see an apple in the same way so that they can agree on what it is like, this is not only because those subjects are similar but primarily because the apple appears to them in the same way, and it appears to them in the same way because it is the same apple with certain objective properties. What those properties are can only be studied with increasing accuracy, by science for instance. But here we come to the question of what is true and what is not. There can also be false appearances. So things are what they are, not other things. But the being of things depends on the being of subjects. However, it does not depend on the being of any individual subject. If an individual subject dies, there are other subjects that make the being of objects real. If all subjects were removed from the world, which is impossible, the world would not change much, it would only lose its existence. And it must be expressed this way, even if it looks paradoxical.
I have found that this distinction between the subject's role in defining the object and the role that the being of the subject has in the being of the object is very difficult to see. I think this goes beyond the Copernican revolution of Kant.
'Presence'
is just our everyday "here and now", being in the world as
experiencing subjects, as opposed to our instruments and other
objects that are at our presence or somewhere else in the
universe as being in themselves, without a presence of their own.
I only
wanted to describe, with the obvious paradox, the hypothetical and
impossible situation that there are no subjects, no points of view to
the world. No point of view, no world. If life ends some time, it has
nevertheless been, and when it has been, there has been an objective
world for it. Now we come to the difficult question of the relation
between subjective time and physical time, and the question whether
the subjective present is eternal. I think it must be, because else
there would be a point when existence changes into nothingness, which
is absurd. Being does not depend on time, so that now there is being
and then there is no being. Time is one of the basic components in
the structure of being, along with the triadic structure 'the subject
is conscious of the world'. This means that there is always some
manifestation of subjectivity, a presence in relation to which the
world exists. But this reasoning leads us quite deep into metaphysics
and to the theory of generic subjective continuity.
How can
a computer have presence? It is an extension of our brains, and even
our brains have no presence of their own. They only make the content
of our presence what it is, in contact to their environment of
course.
Consciousness is an on-off phenomenon. If a being has subjective experiences, it is conscious, if it has no subjective experiences, it is not conscious. There are no borderline cases. But where the border is in nature, I do not know. We can only infer and guess from the behavior of animals, plants and stones. Some beings, like robots, can also simulate consciousness, because we have programmed them to do so.
Consciousness is an on-off phenomenon. If a being has subjective experiences, it is conscious, if it has no subjective experiences, it is not conscious. There are no borderline cases. But where the border is in nature, I do not know. We can only infer and guess from the behavior of animals, plants and stones. Some beings, like robots, can also simulate consciousness, because we have programmed them to do so.
This is
a paradigm shift in regard to the nowadays dominant materialistic and
physicalistic way of thinking, but not in regard to the
transcendentalist tradition of Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Husserl,
Heidegger, Sartre, Wittgenstein an so on. And it does not conflict
with empirical evidence, it is only a different ontological
interpretation of them. Why the paradigm change is necessary is
because it solves some of our most crucial existential problems,
which the physicalistic approach cannot do: the problems of death and
foreign minds for instance, which I have written about elsewhere. And
isn't it obvious that without us, our consciousness, there can be
nothing? This should not be so difficult to see. Heidegger called
this forgetting our existence 'falling' or 'thrownness into the
world', meaning that we only see the world, not ourselves.
My interpretation leaves science where it is. I trust empirical science like a goat trusts in its horns. When I kick a stone, I feel the empirical facts in my foot. But there are no facts if I am not there, in one form or another, in the role of an ant for instance. If there were only ants in the universe, the universe would only exist in relation to some individual ant at a time, and each of them in proper time and place. This is what I have called 'presence'. So when I use the word 'I' it does not mean only my personal subjecthood, but subjecthood in general, which manifests itself as individual subjects.
This is a strong interpretation, I admit, and I do not expect that anyone accepts it straightaway, but I do not see why the importance and fundamental role of consciousness is so difficult to see. One can also draw different metaphysical conclusions from it as long as the basic idea of the subject-object interdependence is accepted.
My interpretation leaves science where it is. I trust empirical science like a goat trusts in its horns. When I kick a stone, I feel the empirical facts in my foot. But there are no facts if I am not there, in one form or another, in the role of an ant for instance. If there were only ants in the universe, the universe would only exist in relation to some individual ant at a time, and each of them in proper time and place. This is what I have called 'presence'. So when I use the word 'I' it does not mean only my personal subjecthood, but subjecthood in general, which manifests itself as individual subjects.
This is a strong interpretation, I admit, and I do not expect that anyone accepts it straightaway, but I do not see why the importance and fundamental role of consciousness is so difficult to see. One can also draw different metaphysical conclusions from it as long as the basic idea of the subject-object interdependence is accepted.
We must
extend the fundamental role of the subject to more than knowing, to
the level of the basic ontological structure of reality. And why this
must be done is based on an insight about what existence means.
Existence without subjects does not make sense, not even the
existence of objects. An object, or what we call matter, is only
co-existent with subjective existence and presupposes it. All this is
evident to me, but maybe our present physicalistic way of looking at
things makes it difficult to understand and accept.
It
seems to be difficult to accept the view that the universe can have a
sort of natural teleology, the same sort of teleology as a human
organism has. It is not accidental that the human organism is
conscious, although it is not conscious in its early development. In
the same way the universe was empty of conscious beings during most
of its history. This is the holistic view of the universe I am
suggesting. It is a cosmological and metaphysical hypothesis of
course, but it has nothing to do with abiogenesis or the Copernican
or Mediocrity principle. Of course life has arisen from lifeless
matter, and of course we are only a tiny part of the huge cosmos with
much dead matter, because that is what our existence needs for its
concrete realization. So I want to turn the physicalistic picture of
the world upside down. The universe is a spatiotemporal "thing"
with consciousness as its essential and necessary property, and
because it is necessary, the universe as a totality cannot exist
without it.
There
was the famous comment of Schopenhauer on Kant's transcendental
idealism: "The world is in my head and my head is in the world."
The latter part of the sentence is true: my head is indeed in the
world, as part of the world like a stone is part of the world. But
the first part is not what Kant had in mind. He and later Husserl
studied how the objects of the world are constituted in
consciousness, or how we can be conscious of the world. My head is
just one object among others.
But what Kant and Husserl did not study, as far as I remember, is the question of the being of consciousness and subjecthood and their relation to the being of objects. They did not want to go deeper into metaphysics, but I think this question can be studied with the usual methods of phenomenological ontology in the same way as other existential questions, as for instance Heidegger and Sartre have demonstrated with their own philosophical journeys. None of them studied exactly this question though.
But what Kant and Husserl did not study, as far as I remember, is the question of the being of consciousness and subjecthood and their relation to the being of objects. They did not want to go deeper into metaphysics, but I think this question can be studied with the usual methods of phenomenological ontology in the same way as other existential questions, as for instance Heidegger and Sartre have demonstrated with their own philosophical journeys. None of them studied exactly this question though.
What is
the difference between the universe with conscious beings and the
universe without conscious beings? It is the simple fact that the
latter does not exist. Its being is not logically possible.
Saying
that the subjectless universe is logically impossible is a bit
provocative, but I stay with that claim. We cannot posit the being of
a world where we are not in, or part of. It would lead to a reductio
ad absurdum.
I have
a holistic view on the universe and also on a human organism. If
there is one human organism or any other organism in the universe
that is a subject, then it is meaningful to speak of there being a
universe, else not. This being of the subject defines the very
meaning of existence, also the existence of material objects, which
are only co-existent with conscious subjects. It is logically
impossible to posit the being of something with which we have no kind
of relationship, except as an internally inconsistent
abstraction.
So a human organism is a totality with conscious and non-conscious phases, but its consciousness defines the world around it, also the being of the world. And if it is not conscious, others are, and if there are no others, there are no subjects, and there is nothing, which is absurd. Reductio ad absurdum. But the nonexistence of the hypothetical universe without subjects is a different kind of nonexistence than the nonexistence of an object in the world, like the nonexistence of unicorns or the nonexistence of a planet between Earth and Venus. The existence or nonexistence of the world only depends on the being or non-being of the subject, not on the other content of the world. This is also paradoxical, and therefore there can be only the universe we live in, the universe with subjects, our universe. All other universes are abstractions from our universe, like a unicorn is an abstraction from animals we know. But a unicorn is a much more rational abstraction than the universe without inhabitants.
So a human organism is a totality with conscious and non-conscious phases, but its consciousness defines the world around it, also the being of the world. And if it is not conscious, others are, and if there are no others, there are no subjects, and there is nothing, which is absurd. Reductio ad absurdum. But the nonexistence of the hypothetical universe without subjects is a different kind of nonexistence than the nonexistence of an object in the world, like the nonexistence of unicorns or the nonexistence of a planet between Earth and Venus. The existence or nonexistence of the world only depends on the being or non-being of the subject, not on the other content of the world. This is also paradoxical, and therefore there can be only the universe we live in, the universe with subjects, our universe. All other universes are abstractions from our universe, like a unicorn is an abstraction from animals we know. But a unicorn is a much more rational abstraction than the universe without inhabitants.
I do
not know the details of the physical change needed for matter to
become conscious, and I guess no one knows. Perhaps it has something
to do with the possibility of managing information for the arising
consciousness. But I claim that consciousness, or the subject, is
there already as a potentiality of using that information. My view is
more like an ontological standpoint than a clear view on the concrete
situation.
I have
a holistic view of the universe, meaning that the universe is a
spatio-temporal totality. Physical time can be thought of as a
dimension, as opposed to subjective time. Consciousness is an
essential "property" of this totality, but the early stages
of the universe were also necessary in the same way as the existence
of the fetus is necessary for the existence of the conscious human
being. The world has also its becoming, which means becoming
conscious in the form of individual conscious beings.
You
exist for yourself and others. But if there is no me, no you, or
anyone else experiencing anything, has never been or will never be,
then there is no way of positing being of any kind, except as an
internally inconsistent abstraction. This is the "provocative"
part of my reasoning. And the syllogism is therefore:
if there are no conscious beings in the universe seen as a spatiotemporal totality
then there is nothing, which is absurd and self-contradictory
therefore there are necessarily conscious beings in the universe seen as a spatiotemporal totality.
Positing the existence of unicorns is rational because it is logically possible that there are such creatures in the world, but positing the world without subjects is the most irrational thing I can imagine.
if there are no conscious beings in the universe seen as a spatiotemporal totality
then there is nothing, which is absurd and self-contradictory
therefore there are necessarily conscious beings in the universe seen as a spatiotemporal totality.
Positing the existence of unicorns is rational because it is logically possible that there are such creatures in the world, but positing the world without subjects is the most irrational thing I can imagine.
When I
wake up from a dreamless sleep, something changes, also in my brain I
suppose. But in sleep as well as awake there are brain processes. I
do not know if neuroscientists have detected the difference on the
physiological level, but then there is, of course, the decisive
phenomenological difference between conscious and unconscious, and
also between conscious and non-conscious, a stone for instance. What
makes me wake up and start using my brains as a conscious subject?
Any ideas? This is a mystery for me. And as I have said, I think this
difference has much to do with being and non-being in general.
It looks like the change, whatever it is, must happen for the subject, to "wake it up" from its potentiality to actuality. Something in nature "pushes" the organism awake. But I think the potentiality for consciousness, or the "metaphysical subject", must have been already there as the basis of the unknown properties of the singularity from which everything started.
It looks like the change, whatever it is, must happen for the subject, to "wake it up" from its potentiality to actuality. Something in nature "pushes" the organism awake. But I think the potentiality for consciousness, or the "metaphysical subject", must have been already there as the basis of the unknown properties of the singularity from which everything started.
We
cannot escape existence, so what else can we do than play!
Interestingly, this seems to be what also Sartre thought in Being
and Nothingness. Ludere necesse est, vivere non est necesse.
In my
thinking consciousness is a synonym for subjective experiencing, or
presence, as I have said. It has nothing to do with the "immaterial
mind", whatever that could mean. And if we see the universe as a
spatiotemporal "thing" as I have described it a bit
metaphorically, then it exists for any one subject that has ever
existed in the universe, but not in any other sense of existing. And
this is not a conclusion that can be achieved with a strict and
formal logical reasoning, it is more like a phenomenological
intuition of the absurdity of positing existence of a world with
which we cannot logically have any kind of relationship.
The
subject is already there "objectively", only not yet
conscious.
I think
that also material things are essential for the existence of what is
fundamentally essential: the subject and its consciousness of the
world, or presence. It is not necessary that an individual fetus
develops to a conscious human being, but given that there are human
beings, some of them must become conscious. And if there were no
human beings, there must be some other conscious beings somewhere,
and in that case we would be those beings. And, as I said, if there
were no conscious beings anywhere, any time in the universe, there
would be no universe in any meaningful sense of being or existing.
And when I speak about necessity, the necessity of the being of
consciousness is more like logical necessity, and the necessity of
the way the world is constructed as the instrument for the being of
consciousness is connected with the question of whether the laws of
physics are logically necessary or not.
How can
we posit even the possibility of the being of something
we have no relationship with? We have a relationship with unicorns in
the sense that there is a place for them in the logical space and in
our world, but for a world without subjects we have no logical
space. Therefore it is an absurdity, and only if an absurdity is
possible, the world without inhabitants is possible.
No one
has witnessed the big bang, but its being or non-being is still in
relation to our being there, existing. Saying that the big bang just
happened to create an uninhabited or inhabited world seems natural,
but is in fact an unjustified and internally inconsistent
abstraction. We tend to forget our own existence and its essential
nature in the structure of reality.
Consciousness
did not emerge from anything. Something emerged from the necessity of
the being of consciousness, namely the complexity of our universe, to
make consciousness concretely existing in the concrete world, because
there cannot be consciousness in itself, floating around in
emptiness. So God did not create the world, the subject did for its
own project of being, whatever that project is. Consciousness is the
manifestation of this project. If we think of it carefully, what else
is there but us?
My
holistic view of the universe means, for instance, that the essential
features of it, especially the being of consciousness, explain its
origin and development. I do not think that this conflicts with
science, only deepens our understanding of what lies behind
scientific facts.
Another attempt to clarify my point: I have written: "If I did not exist, there would be nothing", which at first sight seems not only paradoxical but false. When someone dies, the world does not cease to exist. But the situation between me and another is not symmetrical. When someone dies, I still exist, and many others still exist, and we can say the famous phrase "I am". Even if ants were the only conscious subjects in the world, there would still be a sense in saying "I am" in the case of an individual ant, although it could not express it as clearly as Descartes. Descartes doubted the existence of the world, and he could doubt it because he was certain that the "I am" was true. But if there is no "I am" that can be said of any subject, there is no doubting, no certainty, no perspective to the world. The whole world vanishes away, which is absurd, and this is the reason why there necessarily must be subjects in the universe if it makes any sense to speak of the existence of the universe. An uninhabited universe is an abstraction beyond being and non-being.
Another attempt to clarify my point: I have written: "If I did not exist, there would be nothing", which at first sight seems not only paradoxical but false. When someone dies, the world does not cease to exist. But the situation between me and another is not symmetrical. When someone dies, I still exist, and many others still exist, and we can say the famous phrase "I am". Even if ants were the only conscious subjects in the world, there would still be a sense in saying "I am" in the case of an individual ant, although it could not express it as clearly as Descartes. Descartes doubted the existence of the world, and he could doubt it because he was certain that the "I am" was true. But if there is no "I am" that can be said of any subject, there is no doubting, no certainty, no perspective to the world. The whole world vanishes away, which is absurd, and this is the reason why there necessarily must be subjects in the universe if it makes any sense to speak of the existence of the universe. An uninhabited universe is an abstraction beyond being and non-being.
Imagine
that you are the only conscious being in the universe. You see that
the universe is objectively there although you do not see all of it.
Then you die, for good. Where is the universe now? What now? There is
no now or here. There is nothing and there has never been anything,
because there is no time. It is exactly the same as if you had never
existed, and the universe had never existed. Therefore such a
universe cannot exist. All existence presupposes a "here and
now", a presence, to exist. And this presence is the "I
am", a subject's conscious being in the world that gets its
existence from that presence, giving the subject its concrete
existence in turn. The subject-object relationship cannot be broken
without destroying all being.
Presence
is not a property in the sense we usually speak of properties. It is
something much more fundamental, part of the basic ontological
structure of reality.
There
are places with which we have no relationship, but this lack of
relationship is a lack of relationship with us. If there are
no 'us', there is nothing with which we lack relationship, and its
being can only be posited as an abstraction with no real meaning. We
cannot say anything about its being or non-being. In this sense it
cannot exist, in another sense of existing than the existence of
objects. Now you may say that I posit its non-being, but in fact I
posit the absurdity of its being, which is practically the same
thing. I do not believe in the existence of absurdities.
The
non-conscious universe is a logical impossibility. This insight has
far-reaching metaphysical and existential consequences.
An
uninhabited universe is a mental construct, nothing more.
We need
no transcendent God. The absolute is in us. When I spoke about the
subject's project, and did not say what that project is, that was
deliberate. You are the subject. Ask yourself what you want. Do you
want to live for ever? Do you want to die for good? Do you want to
understand what existence is, what others are, what the universe is,
what is the sense of all this, if any? Perhaps the subject wants to
understand its own being through the world and others. And who are
the others? But you are the subject. You should know. I do not
know. But as the subject, I cannot escape existence, and this
original situation is perhaps the origin of this mysterious
phenomenon of living in this mysterious universe.
So I
guess you want me to tell the difference between conscious and
non-conscious. The reason why I have not done that as clearly as you
want, is perhaps because we all know the difference. The
phenomenological difference is the same as the difference between
being awake and being in dreamless sleep. In sleep we skip a piece of
physical time within our subjective time, and a stone has no
subjective time. So the question is a sort of a pseudo question. And
as to the physiological correlates of this difference, we should ask
neuroscientists. However, the conscious-nonconscious question cannot
be reduced to physiology or physics.
An
uninhabited universe is our mental construct. It is an
abstraction from our inhabited universe, which is the only universe
there is, by definition. And we cannot posit anything beyond our
universe, because it has no place in the logical space. As I said, we
can easily posit the existence of unicorns in our universe, because
there is a logical and spatiotemporal place for them. But we cannot
find a place for a subjectless world, because when we think we have
found it, we must admit that we have only found a place within our
own logic, which presupposes our existence. I am not sure if I am
saying this clearly enough.
If we
speak of another universe with another type of presence, it is really
the one and only universe we have, by my definition of the universe,
as if the two universes put together to make the real universe. And
this universe can only have one type of presence, because there is
only one type of presence, the one which makes the distinction to
non-presence.
I am
speaking of the hypothetical and logically inconsistent universe with
no presence, which means no inhabitants.
Logic
presupposes existence, and if we are speaking of the universe as a
whole, we cannot logically posit a universe without existence. This
is logic. And this is intuition. They are not opposites.
What I
am saying is extremely simple and obvious, but it is so close to our
existence, being in fact at the core of existence itself, that no one
seems to get the point. But it has important consequences.
To sum
up: Positing the possibility of something we need a logical space in
which to posit it. Our logical space is within the structure 'the
subject – the world'. Logic does not reside in a Platonic heaven.
So, if we want to posit the possibility of the whole universe,
whatever its content, we must posit it somewhere within that basic
structure. Its place may vary within this structure, meaning that the
facts of the world can be anything, but it must always have the
structure 'the subject – the world'. Therefore a subjectless
universe is logically impossible.
Remember that there is only one universe, by definition.
Remember that there is only one universe, by definition.
About
the subject-world relationship:
Take Wittgenstein. He thought that the “metaphysical subject” is an ontological precondition for the being of the world. Of course he did not mean any individual subject, but a subject in general, a subject that gets its properties from the world, being itself without properties.
Also logic presupposes the being of the world. He says:
Take Wittgenstein. He thought that the “metaphysical subject” is an ontological precondition for the being of the world. Of course he did not mean any individual subject, but a subject in general, a subject that gets its properties from the world, being itself without properties.
Also logic presupposes the being of the world. He says:
5.552 The
“experience” which we need to understand logic is not that such
and such is the case, but that something is; but that is no
experience.
Logic precedes every experience—that something is
so. It is before the How, not before the What.
5.5521 And if this
were not the case, how could we apply logic? We could say: if there
were a logic, even if there were no world, how then could there be a
logic, since there is a world?
In this
scenario, which I share, the positing of a possible world without
subjects is indeed logically impossible, because the logical space to
posit it is always within the subject-world structure.
A
subject can logically try to posit a possible world of any
kind, but because that world must fit into the logical space within
the structure of 'subject-world', which is our logical universe, so
to speak, the possible world we really posit cannot be without
subjects. The weak point which I challenged you to attack on, is the
question of where logic itself stands in our reality, and if it
stands in our reality at all. So if you look what Wittgenstein
says about it, you can oppose him or not. But if you agree with him,
as I do, the logical conclusion should be clear.
Just to
remind us about the distinction between logical and physical
possibility: It is logically possible that a pink unicorn suddenly
appears in front of us, weighing 178,4 kilograms, floating in the air
and breaking all laws of physics. That pretty creature fits into the
logical space of our logical universe, although not into our physical
universe. And note the little word 'our'.
Now if
you admit that it is logically impossible for a subject to posit the
being of a world with no subjects, then who can posit the logical
possibility of the being of such a world? If no one, where
does this logical possibility come from? Does the logical universe
extend beyond the subject-world structure? And if so, if logic
precedes the being of the world, so that some Platonic
principle says that there can be worlds without subjects, what
relevance can such a principle have? How can we ever use that kind of
logic? We can only use logic within the subject-world dipole. That
basic ontological structure defines the limits of our logical
universe. That the being of x is logically possible means that it is
possible for a subject or other unknown principle to posit the being
of x into the logical universe. And if it is not possible, it is
impossible.
When we
speak about the logical possibility of a being, we must define the
logical space in the logical universe where the possibility of that
being can or cannot be posited. If the possibility of that being lies
outside of the limits of the logical universe, it can be said that
positing the possibility of that being is logically impossible or
absurd, or that it makes no sense to speak of its possibility. Which
one of these expressions we should use, we can discuss, but I think
they all lead to the same: impossibility. Now the logical universe
can or cannot extend beyond our logical universe: the logical
universe where we can use logic. My position, and also
Wittgenstein's, is that the logical universe coincides with our
logical universe, which means that the subject-world relationship
defines the limits for what is logically possible.
A world cannot be an object for the subjects of another world. There is only one world. We must speak about alternate worlds or possible worlds. Now it is not logically possible that there is a world without subjects in our logical universe, which is the only logical universe within which we can use logic. The possibility of a world without subjects lies outside of the logical universe, because it lies outside of the subject-world relationship. Therefore all possible worlds have a subjective viewpoint and necessarily contain subjects.
So, I can logically posit the possibility of a world in which I do not exist as an individual subject, but I cannot logically posit a world without subjects. And because no subject can posit that kind of a world, we cannot speak about its possibility. Its possibility is beyond all logic. Therefore its being is not logically possible if we use logic in the usual way.
A world cannot be an object for the subjects of another world. There is only one world. We must speak about alternate worlds or possible worlds. Now it is not logically possible that there is a world without subjects in our logical universe, which is the only logical universe within which we can use logic. The possibility of a world without subjects lies outside of the logical universe, because it lies outside of the subject-world relationship. Therefore all possible worlds have a subjective viewpoint and necessarily contain subjects.
So, I can logically posit the possibility of a world in which I do not exist as an individual subject, but I cannot logically posit a world without subjects. And because no subject can posit that kind of a world, we cannot speak about its possibility. Its possibility is beyond all logic. Therefore its being is not logically possible if we use logic in the usual way.
About
abstractions:
A unicorn is an abstraction that fits perfectly into our logical universe, and makes sense as part of a possible world.
A Christian's Heaven is a beautiful abstraction and extension of our world, and makes a perfect example of a possible world, with all its inhabitants, although only some of us believe it is real.
A world without inhabitants is an abstraction of our world that does not belong to the group of possible worlds, because its possibility of being lies outside of the limits of our logical universe, outside of the subject-world relationship. It is a "forbidden" world.
A unicorn is an abstraction that fits perfectly into our logical universe, and makes sense as part of a possible world.
A Christian's Heaven is a beautiful abstraction and extension of our world, and makes a perfect example of a possible world, with all its inhabitants, although only some of us believe it is real.
A world without inhabitants is an abstraction of our world that does not belong to the group of possible worlds, because its possibility of being lies outside of the limits of our logical universe, outside of the subject-world relationship. It is a "forbidden" world.
Just to
avoid misunderstanding, my view is a metaphysical interpretation of
reality as a whole, and it does not take a stand on whether
consciousness is part of the QM phenomena. It does not conflict with
naturalism, it is an interpretation of natural phenomena as they are
described by science, and in particular an interpretation of our
existential situation. If it is self-contradictory or in conflict
with science, and someone shows this, I am of course immediately
ready to give up everything I have thought so far.
If proposing the fundamental nature of the subject-world relationship is idealism, then I am an ontological idealist, as many of our most famous philosophers have been.
Someone has said that a philosophical discussion is impossible, because we speak about different things. Each of us has a different horizon, a way of thinking, perhaps built during many decades, and only in the context of that horizon understanding is possible. But also philosophical monologues can be interesting sometimes.
If proposing the fundamental nature of the subject-world relationship is idealism, then I am an ontological idealist, as many of our most famous philosophers have been.
Someone has said that a philosophical discussion is impossible, because we speak about different things. Each of us has a different horizon, a way of thinking, perhaps built during many decades, and only in the context of that horizon understanding is possible. But also philosophical monologues can be interesting sometimes.
My
interpretation is that the laws of physics are such that they make
the cosmic and biological evolution possible and necessary,
also the evolution towards consciousness. So the essential nature of
consciousness is the driving force of the universe. That matter
behaves according to the principles of causality and randomness does
not conflict with this. I am trying to answer the 'why' questions
without getting in conflict with the 'hows' of science.
I can
easily posit the possibility of an objective world and the objective
existence of other subjects. The only thing I cannot logically posit
is the world without inhabitants. Objects are objective in relation
to a subject. They are the same objects for every subject. Also a
subject's consciousness is "objective". It is what it is.
It is perhaps the most objective phenomenon there is. Only the
subject's relationship with objects changes. Therefore there are
varying perspectives to objects. If the objects were not the same
objects for every perspective, there would not be any sense of
speaking of truth and falsity. Now this is important: the being of an
individual subject does not define the being of the world, but there
must be some manifestation of subjectivity, or presence, or
consciousness, to logically posit the possibility of the being of the
world. A world without subjects is outside of the logical universe,
the logical space, within which we can posit anything. And what is
outside of the use of logic is absurd and impossible. It is not a
logical contradiction, it is a logical reductio ad absurdum,
but it leads to the same conclusion as a contradiction:
impossibility. We can do this reasoning because we are living here in
our universe with inhabitants, to limit the group of possible worlds
to those with inhabitants. If there is a weak point in my reasoning,
it is the validity of the premise that the subject-world relationship
defines the limits of the logical universe, but no one has so far
attacked on that.
As seen from above, even if an intuition is clear, it is sometimes very difficult to put into words and logical statements. But what I am trying to do is to lead to my way of thinking, sometimes using unusual expressions.
As seen from above, even if an intuition is clear, it is sometimes very difficult to put into words and logical statements. But what I am trying to do is to lead to my way of thinking, sometimes using unusual expressions.
The
being of objects is independent of the being of an individual
subject, but not independent of the being of the subject in one form
or another. Have you ever thought about what the limits of our
logical universe are, the logical space where we can posit the
possibility of objects and possible worlds?
You can
posit an abstraction of a world without subjects, as if floating in
the air, but that is not a possible world, because a possible
world can be posited only into the logical universe limited by the
subject-world relationship, the logical space where we can use logic.
As I wrote, a world cannot be an object for the subjects of another
world, because there is only one world. We must speak of alternate or
possible worlds. We cannot posit the possibility of a subjectless
world in place of our world, because logic itself defines that it
must be posited within the subject-world relationship. And even if
there were parallel worlds, as in the multiverse scenario, those
parallel worlds would be parallel in relation to our world, a
world with inhabitants, and the world as I define it would be our
world + all the parallel worlds. So there is one world, by
definition, and that world is inhabited.
Logical
statements are valid only within the logical universe, which in my
view is limited by the subject-world relationship, because that is
the logical universe where we can use logic. Logic does not reside in
a Platonic heaven. It precedes the facts of the world, but not the
being of the world. And its use presupposes the being of the user. So
the being and use of logic presupposes the being of an inhabited
world.
So what
can a subject posit into the logical universe if that logical
universe is limited by the subject-world relationship?
We
posit possibilities, because that is what we do in logic. We can
posit the possibility of the being of a material object, like a
stone, into an arbitrary place in the physical universe, even if we
have no causal connection with that place. We can also posit
abstractions like the being of a unicorn into arbitrary places in the
physical universe. We can posit all kinds of possible worlds and
extensions of our world as long as they are inhabited, because they
fit into the logical universe delimited by the subject-world
relationship, which defines the basic ontological structure of
reality. But we cannot consistently posit a possible world without
subjects, although at first sight we think we can, because that kind
of a world is an abstraction from our own universe grounded perhaps
on our knowledge of the uninhabited regions and early stages of our
universe, and this abstraction lies outside of our logical universe
for reasons I have given. Therefore its being is logically
impossible, whereas the being of unicorns is only physically
impossible. As I said, it is a "forbidden" world.
Logic
cannot precede the being of the world or the subject-world structure,
it only precedes facts. Logic cannot be used outside of the
subject-world relationship, and what cannot be used, has no use. Such
logic would have no relevance. We can limit the logical universe from
within logic, by reductio ad absurdum, just because we can use
logic.
This
seems to be very difficult to explain in spite of its self-evidence
for me. It seems to demand some kind of change in the way of
thinking, a more reflective attitude. And I also think that we are
here at the core of what idealism really means, its logical
foundation. And I do not mean subjective idealism.
The
logic of imagining is the same as the logic of having a dream. You
can have a dream about unicorns, you can have a dream about Heaven if
you are a Christian and believe in Heaven, but what would it be like
to have a dream about the world without inhabitants? Perhaps it would
be something like a desert with nobody anywhere - except you.
Imagining a universe without subjects is like looking at the universe
from outside, saying: "Wow, there is a universe with no
inhabitants!" But you are not outside. You are doomed to be an
insider. You cannot cry: "Stop the world, I want to get out!"
In my
definition consciousness = the subject's immediate experiencing the
world = presence = the content of present experiencing. Other
versions are also available. But it is on-off: the subject is or the
subject is not. And the world where the subject is not, is not
logically possible, and the being of the subject keeps the universe
existing. Where the subject is in nature is irrelevant in this
context.
The
being of the universe depends on the being of subjects,
because 'being' makes no logical sense otherwise.
We
cannot prove or disprove this kind of a statement logically, using a
formal procedure, only through showing the limits of logic, showing
that the positing of the possibility of a subjectless world is
without any meaning because it lies outside of the limits of logic.
Logically
we need the concept of 'subject' that experiences the world. But it
is not a "thing", it gets its properties from the world,
being itself without properties.
I see
the subject as the same kind of "metaphysical subject" as
Wittgenstein in Tractatus, a kind of a reference point for the
facts of the world.
I do
not want to be a thing. And I am not a thing.
Either
there is a content of experience or not. If there is not, then we
skip a piece of physical time and our subjective existence continues
without a break. So, in fact , there cannot be such a phenomenon as
subjective nonexistence.
I have
said that the ontological structure of reality is 'the subject - the
world'. This is the structure that Wittgenstein in his Notebooks
1914-1916 calls “the two godheads”. The being of the subject
depends on the being of the world and the being of the world depends
on the being of the subject. So, as W. says in Tractatus,”the
world is my world”, and in death “the world does not change but
ceases”. But we must interpret this so that the world ceases for an
individual subject, not the subject in general, because we know that
the world does not end when someone dies. As long as there are
subjects in the world, having a relationship to the world, we can
meaningfully say that the world exists. It exists if there is a
presence in subjective time, any time, anywhere.
So the subject – world relationship is the ontological precondition for the being of the world, any possible world. And it is also the ontological precondition for the being of the subject and any of its individual manifestations, individual subjects like me and all of us. If it were possible to remove the world, nothing would be left, and if it were possible to remove all subjects, nothing would be left. But fortunately it is not possible to remove either of them, so we do not need to worry about the end of the world.
So my claim that it is logically impossible to imagine or posit the possibility of a world without inhabitants is based on the ontological limitations for the application of logic. We cannot apply logic outside of the logical universe defined by the subject – world relationship. We can posit abstract objects like unicorns as part of a possible world, and there is no problem with that, because they fit perfectly into the logical universe defined by the ontology described above, but the possibility of a subjectless world lies outside of its limits.
In short: we can posit all kinds of possible objects into our world, and all kinds of possible worlds as long as their possibility lies inside the logical universe. But the world is not an object, and a world without inhabitants is not a possible world because its logical possibility is not inside the logical universe.
All abstractions are not possible. In relation to the world we are not spectators, we are participants. And we cannot escape that position. As I said, a good rule for finding out what is possible and what is not, is this: think about the possibility of having a dream of it, so you can easily see if it is possible. Imagining and dreaming are not logically very far from each other.
As to the logical universe, I repeat: Logic precedes the facts of the world, so that there are all kinds of possible worlds, but logic does not precede the being of the world. And because the being of the world is an ontological precondition of logic and the being of the subject is an ontological precondition of the being of the world, the limits for using logic are defined by the subject – world relationship.
This is what I mean by saying that it is impossible to consistently imagine a world without subjects.
So the subject – world relationship is the ontological precondition for the being of the world, any possible world. And it is also the ontological precondition for the being of the subject and any of its individual manifestations, individual subjects like me and all of us. If it were possible to remove the world, nothing would be left, and if it were possible to remove all subjects, nothing would be left. But fortunately it is not possible to remove either of them, so we do not need to worry about the end of the world.
So my claim that it is logically impossible to imagine or posit the possibility of a world without inhabitants is based on the ontological limitations for the application of logic. We cannot apply logic outside of the logical universe defined by the subject – world relationship. We can posit abstract objects like unicorns as part of a possible world, and there is no problem with that, because they fit perfectly into the logical universe defined by the ontology described above, but the possibility of a subjectless world lies outside of its limits.
In short: we can posit all kinds of possible objects into our world, and all kinds of possible worlds as long as their possibility lies inside the logical universe. But the world is not an object, and a world without inhabitants is not a possible world because its logical possibility is not inside the logical universe.
All abstractions are not possible. In relation to the world we are not spectators, we are participants. And we cannot escape that position. As I said, a good rule for finding out what is possible and what is not, is this: think about the possibility of having a dream of it, so you can easily see if it is possible. Imagining and dreaming are not logically very far from each other.
As to the logical universe, I repeat: Logic precedes the facts of the world, so that there are all kinds of possible worlds, but logic does not precede the being of the world. And because the being of the world is an ontological precondition of logic and the being of the subject is an ontological precondition of the being of the world, the limits for using logic are defined by the subject – world relationship.
This is what I mean by saying that it is impossible to consistently imagine a world without subjects.
We have
no logical justification to say anything about the being or not being
of the hypothetical world without subjects. But then, if there is no
logical sense in the being of such a world, we can at least say that
its being is impossible to consistently imagine, and because the idea
of its being is as absurd as it is, its being can be ruled out by
appealing to its absurdity. I think this is what reductio ad
absurdum means. And at the moment I think that the correct way of
saying it is that its being is logically impossible, in line with the
reasoning I have presented. And it is also the only way of saying it
in the light of the clear phenomenological intuition of the absurdity
of the being of the subjectless world. We must remember that there is
only one world, by definition. That the idea of its being without
subjects is beyond logic is based on this definition.
I have used many words to explain what I mean, but I can say it with six words:
We cannot get rid of ourselves.
This is my ontology.
I have used many words to explain what I mean, but I can say it with six words:
We cannot get rid of ourselves.
This is my ontology.
The
content of consciousness is or is not, that is what I mean by on/off.
Clear or diffuse, feeling or thought, aware of self or not, a content
follows a content, and there is nothing between.
My
reasoning tries to show that positing the possibility of x lies
outside of logic, outside of the space where logic can be used. The
conclusion cannot be achieved by a logical proof, just because it is
outside of the possibilities of using logic. So the impossibility of
the original claim is proved by showing that there is no logical
justification to make that claim. It is based on the ontology of
logic, not logic itself.
There
is no such thing as bodily consciousness. The phenomenology of
consciousness is such that it is or is not, independent of our
noticing or not noticing it.
How
would you describe a state that is between conscious and
non-conscious? Phenomenologically, not physiologically.
I have
said that there are necessarily subjects in the world. However, the
subjects are not in the world in the same way as material objects are
in the world. Our being in the world, as subjects, means that we are
conscious of the world. The world appears to us, or discloses itself
for us, more or less. This appearing itself has its material
correlate in the world as our bodies have material and
spatio-temporal relations to one another and to the rest of the
world. A subject, as subject, has no extension, not even a temporal
extension, because subjective time consists of successive
experiential contents, as the present gets replaced with a new
present. The relationship between subjective time and physical time
is one of the fundamental questions of philosophy if we want to think
of our existence in the universe that we cannot escape from.
When
"the light is on" we are conscious, otherwise not. It is
on/off. And if it is off, we do not exist in the existential sense
and there is a gap in physical time, but not in subjective time. But
this is part of the phenomenological definition of
consciousness. Therefore I asked you to give a phenomenological
description of possible in-between states so that we could get a
better definition, a definition that would allow those in-between
states. I would say that no such description is possible. You give
physiological descriptions and descriptions of behavior, but they are
not relevant if we want to define consciousness as it is in itself,
as it appears to us in reflection.
1.
There is only one world.
2. There are subjects in the world.
3. Only subjects can use logic.
4. The scope of logic is the same as the scope of using logic.
5. The limits of the logical space where a subject can posit possibilities are defined by the subject-world relationship.
6. Therefore, because there is only one world, a subject cannot consistently imagine a world without subjects, because it lies outside of the limits of logic.
2. There are subjects in the world.
3. Only subjects can use logic.
4. The scope of logic is the same as the scope of using logic.
5. The limits of the logical space where a subject can posit possibilities are defined by the subject-world relationship.
6. Therefore, because there is only one world, a subject cannot consistently imagine a world without subjects, because it lies outside of the limits of logic.
By the
world I understand a spatiotemporal totality. So either there are
subjects in the world or there are not. This does not depend on time
or place. And I argue that there are necessarily subjects in the
world because the being of the world indeed depends on the being of
subjects, or to be precise, on the “metaphysical” subject which
Wittgenstein spoke about in Tractatus, a kind of a reference
point for the facts of the world. All individual subjects are
concrete manifestations of this fundamental ontological principle of
subjectivity.
Logic
has no meaning outside of its usage. It does not precede the being
of the world, although it precedes the facts of the world.
We can
posit the possibility of all kinds of abstractions, such as unicorns,
and all kinds of possible worlds as long as they fit into the limits
of the logical space defined by the subject-world relationship. But
we cannot posit the possibility of the world without subjects,
because it does not fit into that logical space. The possibility of
another world without subjects could be posited and imagined
parallel to our world, but there is no other world, as was postulated
and defined. So the impossibility of using logic prevents us from
positing the possibility of the world without subjects.
All we
can consistently imagine must fit into the logical space, the space
of possibilities, and this space is necessarily within the limits of
the subject-world relationship. As I said, unicorns fit perfectly
into that space, but the world without subjects does not. Remember
that we try to posit the universe, not an object.
When you say it is easy for you to imagine the world without subjects, I could ask you to describe what such a world might look like. You could describe a desert, for instance, and say that this is the whole universe, and you see how easy it was to imagine. But you are there, and you cannot take the position of an outsider even if you wanted. Even science cannot take that position.
When you say it is easy for you to imagine the world without subjects, I could ask you to describe what such a world might look like. You could describe a desert, for instance, and say that this is the whole universe, and you see how easy it was to imagine. But you are there, and you cannot take the position of an outsider even if you wanted. Even science cannot take that position.
My
argument was: it is impossible to consistently posit the possibility
of the world without subjects.
To clarify the meaning of 'logical space': If I say that I saw a green cow this morning, this fits into the logical space of colors. But if I say that the universe is green, that is nonsense. Now my premise is that the widest logical space where we can posit possibilities is the space within the limits defined by the subject-world relationship. We can posit all kinds of possibilities into that logical space, as parts of possible worlds, and also all kinds of possible worlds as long as there are subjects in them. If the only subjects in the possible alternate world were rats, and we assume that rats are conscious beings, we can posit such a possible world without problems. But the world without subjects cannot be posited into that space. It is "too large". To say that the world is subjectless is nonsense in the same way as saying that the universe is green. This reasoning is somewhat circular, I admit, but I think we cannot avoid that, because a straightforward logical proof is not possible due to the fact that we are moving on the frontiers of logic. We can only try to understand the idea of this argument, and we can approach this understanding from several directions, until the insight of its truth comes, if it ever comes.
Another approach is based on the on/off nature of consciousness. We can extend this idea to the universe as a whole. Let us imagine that all subjects are suddenly removed from the universe. What is left? Nothing. There is no meaningful way of speaking of the existence of the universe after the "lights are switched off". This is obvious but needs a certain kind of intuition for seeing its self-evidence. But, on the other hand, the sudden disappearance of the world is not possible, it is absurd and paradoxical. Everything cannot just vanish away with switching the light off. The paradox can be resolved only by concluding that there are necessarily subjects in the world. This is a version of reductio ad absurdum.
To clarify the meaning of 'logical space': If I say that I saw a green cow this morning, this fits into the logical space of colors. But if I say that the universe is green, that is nonsense. Now my premise is that the widest logical space where we can posit possibilities is the space within the limits defined by the subject-world relationship. We can posit all kinds of possibilities into that logical space, as parts of possible worlds, and also all kinds of possible worlds as long as there are subjects in them. If the only subjects in the possible alternate world were rats, and we assume that rats are conscious beings, we can posit such a possible world without problems. But the world without subjects cannot be posited into that space. It is "too large". To say that the world is subjectless is nonsense in the same way as saying that the universe is green. This reasoning is somewhat circular, I admit, but I think we cannot avoid that, because a straightforward logical proof is not possible due to the fact that we are moving on the frontiers of logic. We can only try to understand the idea of this argument, and we can approach this understanding from several directions, until the insight of its truth comes, if it ever comes.
Another approach is based on the on/off nature of consciousness. We can extend this idea to the universe as a whole. Let us imagine that all subjects are suddenly removed from the universe. What is left? Nothing. There is no meaningful way of speaking of the existence of the universe after the "lights are switched off". This is obvious but needs a certain kind of intuition for seeing its self-evidence. But, on the other hand, the sudden disappearance of the world is not possible, it is absurd and paradoxical. Everything cannot just vanish away with switching the light off. The paradox can be resolved only by concluding that there are necessarily subjects in the world. This is a version of reductio ad absurdum.
When I
said that I cannot imagine the world without subjects, I meant that I
cannot consistently posit the possibility of its existence as
an alternative to our world.
It is easy to think of the world without subjects, but impossible to think of its existence. If you understand this difference, you understand my point.
It is easy to think of the world without subjects, but impossible to think of its existence. If you understand this difference, you understand my point.
A
unicorn is a mental construct with no real correlate even if the
possibility of its real correlate were posited. It is the same with
the mental construct of the world without subjects, with the
difference that even the possibility of its existence cannot be
consistently posited.
The
possibility of the existence of the world without subjects cannot be
posited as real, because it is not an object in the world, not in any
possible world. It is the world itself, and that makes the situation
completely different. The existence or nonexistence of the world
without subjects has nothing to do with what the world looks like,
because it is not a possible world. Unicorns are different in this
respect. They are or are not part of the world and their being or
non-being makes a difference.
My view can perhaps be described as some kind of objective idealism. There is an objective world independent of an individual subject, but its being depends on the basic ontological structure of reality, which is the subject's relationship with the world. Therefore the world without subjects is impossible. This is only a description, I am not trying to prove that it is the only possible metaphysical position.
My view can perhaps be described as some kind of objective idealism. There is an objective world independent of an individual subject, but its being depends on the basic ontological structure of reality, which is the subject's relationship with the world. Therefore the world without subjects is impossible. This is only a description, I am not trying to prove that it is the only possible metaphysical position.
Of
course unicorns belong to our fauna, in their conspicuous absence!
But the same cannot be said of the world without subjects.
The
basic ontological structure of 'subject-world', which must be taken
as a premise because it precedes logic, also defines the logical
space where we can posit possibilities. So there is a principle in
the ontology of logic which rules out the possibility of positing the
existence of the subjectless world.
Another
subjectless world can easily be posited parallel with ours, but not
an alternative for it.
You are
in the universe. And if you are not, it is only part of the universe.
The
main point is that the whole subjectless world is nonexistent.
If all of us, and I mean all subjects in the world, were zombies, and
the whole physical universe were the same as it is now, what would
there be? First: there would be no 'us'. Second: there would be no
sense in 'existence'. Third: there would be no existence. Fourth:
there would be nothing. Paradoxically: the only difference from our
present world would be that the hypothetical world would not exist.
The world would not end with a bang, it would only cease to exist.
And because this is paradoxical and absurd, the only possible
conclusion is that there are necessarily subjects in the world.
I think that we do not see clearly enough what 'existence' means. It is too close to us.
I think that we do not see clearly enough what 'existence' means. It is too close to us.
In
short: consciousness is not everywhere, but its evolution is
necessary.
There
is no logical route to any ontological standpoint, not to
materialism, not to the subject-world structure I am proposing.
Ontology precedes logic. A logical proof of my argument is impossible
because of the impossibility of using logic outside of the world. But
I have given reasons for my standpoint from the premise of the
subject-world ontology, and the conclusion is clear. There is no
other answer to the question 'why'. But if you do not get it, you go
on asking 'why' even if it is unreasonable.
No 'I',
no existence. Because that is what existence means. I am not going to
prove this. It cannot be proved. But for me it is obvious.
There
is no external perspective.
Perhaps
this is the subtle difference between materialism and
anti-materialism: is the world without subjects existent or
nonexistent?
if you
posit another world parallel to this one, you can posit it with or
without subjects and there is no problem, and we can define the world
= this world + all the parallel worlds. But we are positing alternate
worlds, and that makes the big difference.
I think
language reflects ontology. We live in this world. The word 'this'
refers to 'us'. So, if this world were without us, what kind of an
ontological leap would that be? We are speaking of an alternate
world, aren't we? So the alternate world would be our world without
us, without there ever being us. This seems very strange to me.
The
transcendent material universe created us. It did not need us, we
just appeared here by accident.
The transcendent spiritual God created us. He did not need us, He just decided to create us.
No, if God created us, it was because we demanded it, and if the universe created us, it was because we demanded it.
So God = the universe, and its being depends on our being. To say that the universe without subjects is possible is same kind of nonsense as saying that the transcendent God is possible.
The transcendent spiritual God created us. He did not need us, He just decided to create us.
No, if God created us, it was because we demanded it, and if the universe created us, it was because we demanded it.
So God = the universe, and its being depends on our being. To say that the universe without subjects is possible is same kind of nonsense as saying that the transcendent God is possible.
If the
subject is off, the light of existence is off. But it cannot be off.
There is no such thing as nonexistence. The being of subjects is
necessary both ontologically and cosmologically.
By the
way, it is not accidental that I use the word 'we' to denote all the
subjects in the universe.
I am
speaking of a situation where this world of ours does not exist, but
the world without subjects could exist instead. And I am saying that
it cannot exist.
If we
remove the last of us, nothing is left. Without the subject there is
nothing. And for the being of the subject there must be at least one
individual subject in the world.
The subject-world relationship is the ontological "Archimedean point" of reality. There is nothing without it, and everything that happens, happens within this relationship.
This is my ontology.
The subject-world relationship is the ontological "Archimedean point" of reality. There is nothing without it, and everything that happens, happens within this relationship.
This is my ontology.
I do
not think that material objects are conscious, not even our brains or
bodies. They are our instruments of existing, like hammers and
robots.
For
materialists the premise is: matter is the Absolute. For me the
premise is: the subject is the Absolute. Which one of these is more
reasonable, is the key of all this discussion. Evidence? There is
scientific evidence, which must not be ignored. Then there is
"existential" evidence, a deep sense of our existential
situation and its paradoxes. We must draw conclusions from both.
The
subject cannot be aware of itself without a mirror. The world is its
mirror.
We have
an internal point of view to the world, because we belong to the
world.
There is no external point of view to the world, a “God's eye” or something. All perspectives to the world are internal.
We cannot imagine ourselves looking at the world from an external viewpoint and saying: “There are no subjects!” It just makes no sense.
To say that the world without subjects is possible requires a leap from an internal viewpoint to an external viewpoint, from immanence to transcendence. It is a religious leap, and it has no justification.
If this is materialism, materialism is a religion. I am on the immanent side. Matter without the subject is transcendent, the subject is immanent.
There is no external point of view to the world, a “God's eye” or something. All perspectives to the world are internal.
We cannot imagine ourselves looking at the world from an external viewpoint and saying: “There are no subjects!” It just makes no sense.
To say that the world without subjects is possible requires a leap from an internal viewpoint to an external viewpoint, from immanence to transcendence. It is a religious leap, and it has no justification.
If this is materialism, materialism is a religion. I am on the immanent side. Matter without the subject is transcendent, the subject is immanent.
The
world cannot exist, because there is no reason for its existence. But
it exists. Strange!
The subject must exist, because its nonexistence would be self-contradictory. But it cannot exist without the world. So the world exists for the subject.
The subject must exist, because its nonexistence would be self-contradictory. But it cannot exist without the world. So the world exists for the subject.
There
is an objective world that all of us share, and the others appear to
us as subjects. But without subjects there is nothing. This should
not be so difficult to understand. A simple reflective step proves
this.
You see
a picture of an uninhabited world before your eyes. Suddenly you
realize that you are in the picture and cannot get out. It is not the
picture you thought it was.
And it disappears.
Philosophers must become poets to understand basic ontology.
And it disappears.
Philosophers must become poets to understand basic ontology.
Consciousness
emerges because it is fundamental. Its emerging is necessary because
it is the essence of the universe in the same way as it is essential
for a human organism.
The
plasma phase was part of the early stages of the becoming of
the universe as we experience it, being manifestations of its essence
as consciousness, in the same way as the embryo is an early phase of
the becoming of the conscious human being.
About
emerging.
So there is an uninhabited world with no relationship to subjects. Now subjects emerge from this world - or do not emerge. Think of this latter alternative. What does it mean that such a world exists, instead of this world that we are experiencing? The uninhabited past of our world has meaning because we are here to give it a meaning, and we can say it exists or has existed, but without our being in the world the world and its possible existence has no meaning. Existence without subjects makes no sense. Matter without subjects makes no sense. In the same way as a transcendent God is purely fictitious, also transcendent matter, matter without a relationship with subjectivity, is purely fictitious.
So there is an uninhabited world with no relationship to subjects. Now subjects emerge from this world - or do not emerge. Think of this latter alternative. What does it mean that such a world exists, instead of this world that we are experiencing? The uninhabited past of our world has meaning because we are here to give it a meaning, and we can say it exists or has existed, but without our being in the world the world and its possible existence has no meaning. Existence without subjects makes no sense. Matter without subjects makes no sense. In the same way as a transcendent God is purely fictitious, also transcendent matter, matter without a relationship with subjectivity, is purely fictitious.
The
question is if there must be subjects in the alternate
universe seen as a spatiotemporal totality, for us to be able to
consistently imagine the world without subjects, an alternate
world for our world, not a parallel one. The answer is not as simple
as you suggest. Or for me it is simple, but others do not seem to get
the point, of which I am a bit surprised. But I admit it requires a
reflective insight to see this. We can say that the subject turns the
light of existence on or off. And it is never off, because
nonexistence is self-contradictory.
So,
from the holistic perspective, can we consistently imagine the world
without subjects, and can such a world, an alternate or possible
world exist? It is a question of what we mean by 'existing'. We can
imagine an uninhabited world as an abstraction, as I wrote, but this
picture before our eyes proves to be internally inconsistent and the
whole idea breaks down. Existence is necessarily related with
subjectivity.
From
the holistic perspective the being of subjectivity and its individual
manifestations is necessary, although it has its history of course, a
history of becoming and "emerging" from uninhabited
phases, like a conscious human being has its non-conscious history as
an embryo. I see the universe, as well as the living organism, as a
process of becoming conscious.
If we
want to posit the possibility of the existence of something, we must
give some meaning to its existence, be able to imagine it. I am
arguing that we cannot consistently give any meaning to the existence
of the subjectless universe. We only believe we can. It is something
like trying to imagine what it is like to not-exist personally. Some
have tried and have seen Heavens and Paradises, some others see
nothing and say there will be nothing, which means that there is
non-being, which is self-contradictory. So there remains a paradox in
the case of our personal lives as well as in the case of the
universe. The only consistent solution to the paradoxes seems to be
the absolute nature of subjectivity.
I know
this cannot be proved with formal logic, because of the limitations
of logic, but imagining the world without subjects collapses into an
internal inconsistency on an a priori basis.
The
original argument was that it is possible to imagine the subjectless
world, and I am arguing that it is not possible, because its
imagining is inconsistent. The positing of such a world loses all
meaning, and therefore it is impossible to imagine it in a consistent
way.
The
problem is that we try to posit a transcendent material world without
subjects as the basis of subjects. But why should we posit a world
that has no relationship with us? What is the motive to posit
such an abstraction as concrete reality? Note that all the
uninhabited regions and times of our universe have a relationship
with us, because we live in the same universe as those regions.
All this leads to the question of what 'existence' means, and the answer tells the difference between materialists and anti-materialists.
All this leads to the question of what 'existence' means, and the answer tells the difference between materialists and anti-materialists.
Accident,
chance, randomness, genuine probability, are very unclear concepts
philosophically, and I would not be surprised if everything would be
strictly determined in the end. There seems to be non-locality and so
on. Perhaps everything just seems random as we look at our universe
from inside.
If I
were the only subject in the universe and died for good, the world
would cease to exist absolutely, and if there were no subjects, the
world would not exist, absolutely. Only if there is the metaphysical
subject, which is the ontological precondition of the being of the
world, can we say that there is the world or anything at all.
To a
materialist I would like to say this:
I guess
it is easy for you to imagine you are dead. You may believe that you
can experience something also after death, but if not, what then?
What has happened? The world has not changed much, it just does not
exist. Nothing exists. Nothing has ever existed, because time has
ended. But we are still here, and others, and we guarantee that the
world exists. If it were possible to somehow remove all of us from
the universe, the universe would not exist, and this time absolutely,
for there would be no one to guarantee its existence. But the world
would not change much, it would only cease to exist. So the world
exists and does not exist. This is what logicians call contradiction.
And the only way to avoid the contradiction is to understand that
existence is always subjective, that there must always be subjects in
the universe. Even all the black holes in the universe are subjective
in the sense that they have a relationship with our being here and
other subjects wherever they happen to be.
Now I am sure you do not see any kind of a paradox or contradiction here, and I claim this is because you have only an external perspective to things, also to yourself. It is the viewpoint of a physicist. I would say you reify yourself. My perspective is internal, subjective, and I see subjective reality as the basic reality we are in. When I die, others say some cells die, and time goes on, but in fact time ends if death is the final event.
I can understand your external point of view somehow, but only somehow, and I think it is not an adequate way of seeing things. So our disagreement seems to be very deep in the core of things. It all concentrates on the question of whether the hypothetical world without subjects can or cannot exist. So it is a question of the meaning of 'existence'. For me existence is subjective, for you objective, seen from the perspective of physics. So we speak different languages, and I do not think they can be translated into each other.
Now I am sure you do not see any kind of a paradox or contradiction here, and I claim this is because you have only an external perspective to things, also to yourself. It is the viewpoint of a physicist. I would say you reify yourself. My perspective is internal, subjective, and I see subjective reality as the basic reality we are in. When I die, others say some cells die, and time goes on, but in fact time ends if death is the final event.
I can understand your external point of view somehow, but only somehow, and I think it is not an adequate way of seeing things. So our disagreement seems to be very deep in the core of things. It all concentrates on the question of whether the hypothetical world without subjects can or cannot exist. So it is a question of the meaning of 'existence'. For me existence is subjective, for you objective, seen from the perspective of physics. So we speak different languages, and I do not think they can be translated into each other.
To make a short summary of my position:
The subject is the absolute.
The subject needs the world for its being and self-awareness.
Therefore the subject-world relationship is the Archimedean point or reality. Without it there is nothing, and everything that happens, happens within this relationship.
The
subject-world relationship is not a relationship of perceiving,
knowing or experiencing. It is a relationship of being. There
are many objects in the universe that are not objects of our
consciousness or any other subject's consciousness, but their being,
and the being of the whole universe, depends on the being of
subjectivity and its manifestations as individual subjects. For an
object to exist it need not be an object of experiencing, but there
must be someone experiencing something.
The being of the subject is an on/off "phenomenon". If the subject is "off", the world is "off", and there is nothing. But if we are not materialists we understand that there is no nothingness. So the subject is always "on". But it can be anywhere any time in the universe, and in fact its being defines all times and places in the universe.
The subject is the absolute, but it is not God. It is me and you, and I do not think either of us is God. There is nothing supernatural in this.
The being of the subject is an on/off "phenomenon". If the subject is "off", the world is "off", and there is nothing. But if we are not materialists we understand that there is no nothingness. So the subject is always "on". But it can be anywhere any time in the universe, and in fact its being defines all times and places in the universe.
The subject is the absolute, but it is not God. It is me and you, and I do not think either of us is God. There is nothing supernatural in this.
Being
is, non-being is not. Being is presence, an ever-changing present,
eternal. Take away the presence, nothing is left. But it cannot be
taken away, so there is no nothingness. The being of the subject is
causa sui, the being of matter would be inconceivable without
it.
Something
can be without appearing to anyone, but it cannot be without the
being of someone. Only the being of the subject makes it
exist.
The
being of matter and the being of the subject are interdependent, but
the being of the subject makes the being of matter understandable.
When
something happened in our solar system about 4 billion years ago and
Earth and Moon took their shape, I think no one was witnessing this.
It was the object of no subject's experience. But the being of that
event can be said to exist only because we are here trying to figure
out what happened. And if not we, then perhaps some other conscious
animal, if evolution had a different course. The being of the subject
and the being of the universe and their relationship of being is not
the same as their direct relationship where the universe is an object
of consciousness for the subject.
The
impossibility of the subjectless universe is obvious. It is based on
an intuition of nothingness and its absurdity.
Descartes
made the mistake that he interpreted his insight to mean that there
is a "soul-substance", res cogitans, but in fact he
found the same "metaphysical subject" as Wittgenstein.
The
subject-world relationship is what exists. This relationship got its
concrete existence as a totality, so that none of its components was
"first". But the essence of this totality is the being of
the subject, and the being of matter in the universe cannot be
conceived without it. The being of matter in itself is an unjustified
presupposition of materialism. What would the universe without
subjects be like? As I said, you cannot imagine it without being
yourself in the picture imagined.
Materialism
presupposes something, and this something is the being of matter.
I also presuppose something, and this something is the subject's relationship with matter and other subjects.
Now we have two competing presuppositions, and we cannot prove either of them to be true, only try to make sense of both and then decide which one is more plausible.
Materialism cannot answer the question of why matter exists. There is no way of seeing the being of matter as causa sui. Its being has to be accepted as given and without any reason of being.
The being of the subject can be seen as causa sui, because we cannot eliminate ourselves from existence. And because the being of the subject is not possible without the being of matter, also the being of matter becomes necessary. So I would say that my presupposition is more reasonable.
This way of seeing our ontological situation also answers the question of what consciousness is. It is the subjective side of the subject's relationship with the material world, and its objective side is the subject's body, being itself part of the material world.
I also presuppose something, and this something is the subject's relationship with matter and other subjects.
Now we have two competing presuppositions, and we cannot prove either of them to be true, only try to make sense of both and then decide which one is more plausible.
Materialism cannot answer the question of why matter exists. There is no way of seeing the being of matter as causa sui. Its being has to be accepted as given and without any reason of being.
The being of the subject can be seen as causa sui, because we cannot eliminate ourselves from existence. And because the being of the subject is not possible without the being of matter, also the being of matter becomes necessary. So I would say that my presupposition is more reasonable.
This way of seeing our ontological situation also answers the question of what consciousness is. It is the subjective side of the subject's relationship with the material world, and its objective side is the subject's body, being itself part of the material world.
All
kinds of things happened prior to the being of any subject in the
physical spacetime, but it did not happen independent of the being of
any subject at all, anywhere, any time in the universe. It could only
happen in such a universe where there are conscious beings. And other
kinds of universes are not possible universes.
The
paradox of something happening prior to the being of subjects and its
impossibility of happening without the being of subjects can only be
solved by concluding that there must necessarily be subjects in the
universe.
I am
not claiming that this is the only possible universe although this
may be the case. I claim that a universe where flying unicorns are a
usual sight is a possible universe, but a universe without subjects
is not possible, if we speak of an alternate universe, so that
this universe does not exist but the alternate universe exists
instead. Because I claim that the subject-world relationship is the
"Archimedean point" of reality, a universe without subjects
does not fit into the logical space defined by this basic ontological
structure. Ontology precedes logic in this sense.
The
nonexistence of the subjectless world is something else than the
nonexistence of an object in the world. Its nonexistence is based on
the lack of experiences which makes it absolute nothingness, and
therefore impossible. If you try to posit its possibility as actual
reality, it immediately loses its possible existence, and it remains
an abstraction with an internal inconsistency. The world without
subjects would be nonexistent as a whole, whatever properties you
imagine it contains. And therefore its existence is impossible.
An
example of a chain of intuitions:
Imagine you do not exist. What would there be? Nothing.
But now I can say that I exist, and there is obviously something. There is nothing only for you.
Then I can imagine that I do not exist either. And that there is no one existing who can say there is something.
Now there is absolutely nothing, and I cannot appeal to anyone arguing against it.
To say that there is still the material world without subjects has no rational justification. It is a presupposition hanging in the air.
This is what I call the intuition of nothingness. It cannot be described with words in spite of the effort above, but it can be seen very clearly, and the conclusion of this chain of intuitions can be expressed with this unambiguous phrase: Without subjects there is nothing.
Imagine you do not exist. What would there be? Nothing.
But now I can say that I exist, and there is obviously something. There is nothing only for you.
Then I can imagine that I do not exist either. And that there is no one existing who can say there is something.
Now there is absolutely nothing, and I cannot appeal to anyone arguing against it.
To say that there is still the material world without subjects has no rational justification. It is a presupposition hanging in the air.
This is what I call the intuition of nothingness. It cannot be described with words in spite of the effort above, but it can be seen very clearly, and the conclusion of this chain of intuitions can be expressed with this unambiguous phrase: Without subjects there is nothing.
My
thoughts go along the same paths as Wittgenstein's. The world is
everything that is the case. The world consists of facts. But the
facts of the world can be different from the facts of our world. What
kind of facts there can be defines the logical space of the world. It
defines the totality of possible worlds. But the being of the subject
is the ontological precondition for the being of the world. The world
is “my world”. The world and the subject are what Wittgenstein
calls the “two godheads”, and this is also what I call the
subject-world relationship. Now I agree with Wittgenstein also on
what he says of logic and the world: logic precedes the facts of the
world, the “how”, but not the being of the world, the
“what”. All this means that a world without subjects is not a
possible world, it does not fit into the logical space of possible
worlds.
If
there were nothing, there would be no one to say anything about
anything.
If there were something but no one to say anything about anything, how could there be any rational justification to say that something exists or even that something possibly exists?
What is
the relationship between logic and the existence of the world? Is
there logic outside of its use?
Just a
few simple questions.
My view
is that eternity means time without an end. Being is eternal, and
time is the "nucleus" of being as Heidegger suggests in the
last paragraph of Being and Time.
So time is the key component of the internal structure of existence, and timelessness only means ignoring the past and the future.
So time is the key component of the internal structure of existence, and timelessness only means ignoring the past and the future.
I say
time is the succession of presents. Time can be experienced as the
eternal present, but nevertheless there is always the next present,
and the next, and so on until there perhaps is no next present, or
then there is always the next present. This is what I think time is.
It does not depend on whether we care or not. We are all in the same
boat here.
I am
speaking of subjective time and its phenomenology. It has nothing to
do with measuring or classifying, and it has the phenomenological
structure of "the lived anticipation of the future from the
past". In spite of this, we have our next moment, next presence,
and if there is no next presence, time ends. It is our existential
situation, and something else than saying that the world goes on
without us. Internal and external descriptions of existence are
perhaps incompatible, and I think that the way science describes
reality is in the end secondary and has little to do with what really
matters.
Kierkegaard
had his leap of faith, but how can we reach this peace and balance?
The "next" is always there, and we do not know what it is.
But then, perhaps we need not know. When the "next" comes,
let it come. Faith without God. Pure faith. Is this our religion?
What
does existence mean?
I can think of a world where you do not exist. That is easy.
You can probably think of a world where I do not exist. No problem.
But can you think of a world where you do not exist? If you can, that is fine.
I cannot think of a world where I do not exist. How could I? What does the existence of such a world mean to me now as I exist? I can only think clearly about things with clear meanings. In my early days when I did not understand what nothingness means, I superficially thought that a world without my existence is possible, but now I see clearly: if I did not exist, there would be nothing, and therefore I can only exist. There is no escape from existence. And this is true for all of us. My metaphysics follows from this insight.
Now I want to ask: if you can think of a world where you do not exist, and I cannot think of a world where I do not exist, what explains our difference in understanding existence? Are our brains so different? Have I somehow lost my ability to think logically?
By 'you' I mean anyone reading this.
I can think of a world where you do not exist. That is easy.
You can probably think of a world where I do not exist. No problem.
But can you think of a world where you do not exist? If you can, that is fine.
I cannot think of a world where I do not exist. How could I? What does the existence of such a world mean to me now as I exist? I can only think clearly about things with clear meanings. In my early days when I did not understand what nothingness means, I superficially thought that a world without my existence is possible, but now I see clearly: if I did not exist, there would be nothing, and therefore I can only exist. There is no escape from existence. And this is true for all of us. My metaphysics follows from this insight.
Now I want to ask: if you can think of a world where you do not exist, and I cannot think of a world where I do not exist, what explains our difference in understanding existence? Are our brains so different? Have I somehow lost my ability to think logically?
By 'you' I mean anyone reading this.
There
is only a small step from the intuition of my nonexistence to
the intuition of nothingness. And nothingness cannot be
consistently thought of, it is without concrete meaning and
self-contradictory.
This is, of course, paradoxical, and leads to some metaphysical conclusions.
This is, of course, paradoxical, and leads to some metaphysical conclusions.
You are
not part of the world in the same way as a stone is part of the
world. Your being in the world is an ontological relationship. You
are in the world, and your being is as essential for the being of the
world as the being of the world is for your being.
You cannot just look at the moon and imagine that a world without you might be something like that. You cannot eliminate yourself from the world, not even in your imagination. If you try, you see absolute nothingness. The absurdity of non-being.
Or that is what I see. Perhaps you see something else. But we must look close enough.
You cannot just look at the moon and imagine that a world without you might be something like that. You cannot eliminate yourself from the world, not even in your imagination. If you try, you see absolute nothingness. The absurdity of non-being.
Or that is what I see. Perhaps you see something else. But we must look close enough.
Why is
there something rather than nothing?
'Something' is a word. 'Nothing' is a word. A word has a denotation and a meaning. In this context we can say that 'something' denotes the world as it objectively exists, and the meaning of 'something' is the way the world appears to the subject. But also the denotation of 'something', the world in itself, in its being, depends on the being of the subject. So we can say that something exists as long as the subject exists, and there is nothing if and only if there are no subjects. And because the being of the subject is causa sui, which means that its being follows from its essence, there is necessarily something.
'Nothing' denotes nothing, and its meaning is paradoxical, contradicting itself immediately as it is thought of or expressed. Nevertheless, it can be an object of intuition.
'Something' is a word. 'Nothing' is a word. A word has a denotation and a meaning. In this context we can say that 'something' denotes the world as it objectively exists, and the meaning of 'something' is the way the world appears to the subject. But also the denotation of 'something', the world in itself, in its being, depends on the being of the subject. So we can say that something exists as long as the subject exists, and there is nothing if and only if there are no subjects. And because the being of the subject is causa sui, which means that its being follows from its essence, there is necessarily something.
'Nothing' denotes nothing, and its meaning is paradoxical, contradicting itself immediately as it is thought of or expressed. Nevertheless, it can be an object of intuition.
If you
have an intuition of your own nonexistence, you have an intuition of
nothingness. There is no world in that intuition, no Big Bang, no
cosmic evolution, no biological evolution, no human civilization, no
community of subjects, no others. Just absolute nothingness, pure and
simple. This is what nothingness would be if it were possible. But it
is not. And therefore nothingness can be defined as the absence of a
subjective perspective of any kind.
If we
think of the universe as a spatiotemporal totality, as I do, and as
modern physics does, it is not difficult to think that the existence
of the universe depends on the existence of subjects, so that the
very being of the universe is based on the being of subjectivity.
Time is only one dimension of this totality. The uninhabited past of
the universe is in relation to the inhabited present, to us, whoever
or whatever we happen to be. We do not know any other kind of being
if we think of the universe as a whole, as a holistic structure. And
there is no rational justification for extrapolating our thinking
outside of this world of subjects. It would be an uninhabited
alternate universe instead of this universe we live in, a universe
without any subjective perspective, and to me that is an absurd
thought, a thought that tries to eliminate itself out of being. So
there is necessarily someone or something looking at the world if
there is a world at all. This is the idea of the subject-world
relationship being fundamental for all being, so that without it
there can be nothing and everything that happens, happens within that
relationship. This is why I have called it the Archimedean point of
reality.
My view
is that the being of the world without the being of some subjective
perspective is impossible. And I know intuitively that it must be
so.
We must separate how the world appears to the subject and that there is a world at all, and also the latter depends on the being of subjectivity. For me this is obvious, but not for all, of which I am surprised.
And of course this has nothing to do with solipsism. The world is a community of subjects, and my personal nonexistence does not end the world. Only if there is no one, has never been anyone and will never be anyone, only in that case, which is in itself impossible, there would be absolutely nothing. And that nothingness, if it were possible, would have nothing to do with anything that physically happens to the physical world. This is a paradox, and it is solved by concluding that there must necessarily be a subjective perspective to the world for there being a world.
My view is a combination of epistemological realism and ontological idealism or subjectivism. The question of solipsism is interesting, but it has nothing to do with these considerations except for the metaphysical consequences of them.
We must separate how the world appears to the subject and that there is a world at all, and also the latter depends on the being of subjectivity. For me this is obvious, but not for all, of which I am surprised.
And of course this has nothing to do with solipsism. The world is a community of subjects, and my personal nonexistence does not end the world. Only if there is no one, has never been anyone and will never be anyone, only in that case, which is in itself impossible, there would be absolutely nothing. And that nothingness, if it were possible, would have nothing to do with anything that physically happens to the physical world. This is a paradox, and it is solved by concluding that there must necessarily be a subjective perspective to the world for there being a world.
My view is a combination of epistemological realism and ontological idealism or subjectivism. The question of solipsism is interesting, but it has nothing to do with these considerations except for the metaphysical consequences of them.
The
problem with materialism is that it makes unjustified assumptions and
commitments. We cannot eliminate the being of the subject from the
knowing of the world, but because we see matter everywhere, we draw
the false conclusion that matter is everything there is, or at least
everything can be reduced to matter, and that the being of matter
does not depend on the being of the subject. This is an epistemic
leap that has no rational justification. What materialism tries to
say is that our own being can be explained by the being of our
objects, in the sense of noumena, which are independent of our
knowledge of them, in the Kantian sense. Here we have two intuitions
in conflict: the intuition of materialism that matter is everything,
and the intuition that the being of the subject cannot be eliminated.
The first intuition appeals to transcendence, because matter in
itself is transcendent, and the second intuition remains within the
scope of immanence and argues that we cannot make a leap out of it
into ontological transcendence. Because a world without subjects
would be precisely that: transcendence without immanence, and this
would mean absolute nothingness if it were possible. But nothingness
is not possible, and therefore there is necessarily some kind of a
subjective perspective to the world if we think of the world as a
spatiotemporal totality.
There
are surely many definitions of materialism, but the main point of our
discussion is whether the being of the world is independent of the
being of the subjective perspective to the world. If consciousness is
an emergent property of matter or if the mind is identical with the
brain does not change this basic ontological question.
I think
all the versions of materialism I know of make the unjustified
assumption that there is matter in itself, independent of the being
of subjectivity, which to me is pure transcendence without immanence,
and I cannot consistently conceive of something like that. It is the
question of a possible universe without subjects, the dividing line
between materialism and the sort of idealism or subjectivism that I
represent.
I have
not said anywhere that objects do no exist independent of our direct
observations of them. I have said that their being is not
independent of the being of subjects. These are totally
different things.
I think
there are many implicit assumptions we are not aware of which are
based on intuitions, and some of those intuitions may be too
superficial, as though they were left half-way. One of those
superficial intuitions is the possibility of the universe without
subjects.
As
human beings we have existential questions of being and non-being,
finitude and eternity and so on. And as human beings we are amazingly
curious about what this is all about. So am I. And philosophy, as I
see it, tries to clarify these questions, and tries to find a
language that can express something about them.
Because the being of experiential states needs a material
basis, the physical evolution precedes those experiential states in
physical time, but what really happens is the evolution of
consciousness, not matter in itself which would produce
consciousness as a kind of side effect or accident.
The subject cannot exist without its
physical body. Therefore we have the material world.