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Tag: consciousness

March 21, 2013

Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (13)

 
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2013 19:04:56 +0000
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment]“Ennead I” by Plotinus.
 
Richard,     
 
You wrote, “my experience is that I cannot know even dimensions before I formally deduce them,”

That is a unique experience. Einstein came to the same conclusion when he developed the Theory of Special Relativity, though perhaps he didn’t have quite the same experience. You both beheld the same underlying reality, although you expressed it in different ways.

Plato’s Absolute, i.e., which is Beauty, Goodness and Truth in One, is immanent. It is distinct but not distant from us, and every soul can ascend to it by reason and intellect. There are different types and levels of beauty, in the human body, in nature, in the universe, in science and art, literature and music. One doesn’t have to be a “Superman” to see beauty or create beauty. Every life is an artistic activity. Every individual is an artist.

The concept of Absolute by no means deny or diminish the freedom of individual existence. On the contrary, the more diverse and free the individual existence, the better and fuller it manifest Absolute Beauty. For instance, Beethoven’s Ninth, unless each member of the choir and orchestra plays his/her best part, the beauty of the symphony cannot be manifested nor experienced by the audience.

Unlike Kant who believes that the noumenal is unknowable, Platonists reason that the noumenal and the phenomenal correspond with one another (sort of like the way an image in the mirror corresponds to the original), since they are both derived from one and the same intelligible reality. Because of this “correspondence”, it is possible to do science. We have been able to predict with accuracy the movement of the stars and other events occurring in nature; Because of this “correspondence” between our consciousness and the outside world, it is possible for us to interact with other people and the world

 

you say, Nemo, “Plato’s Absolute, i.e., which is
Beauty, Goodness and Truth in One“, which
seems to me anachronistic, a premature
conflation with Christian, however implicit,
thought, I don’t think Plato would’ve had a
Trinity, whatever for in a society replete with
a variety of quite serviceable, not to mention
glorious, deities
 
when you speak of “[e]very life“, “[e]very
individual” being “an artistic activity“, “an
artist“, what about animals, insects, trees,
do roses perceive their own beauty, these
are lives, even creative, even inspiring ones,
though I draw the line at inspired, I suspect
they don’t consciously know it 
 
therefore “Beauty, Goodness and Truth” are in
the eye of the beholder, no, as we ask in
French, and the beholder is our own human
only, it appears, incarnation, blessed as we
are, for better or for worse, with
self-consciousness, ““Superm[e]n”” need
not even, but only superfluously, apply  
 
the Tree of Knowledge bore the fruit of
which all of us have partaken, for better or
for worse, by our very nature, and we’ve
created a poem around it in order to
understand
 
it has been mighty, if flawed
 
 
about mirrors, when I yearned for word
from above, or from wherever, I understood
I’d have to forego my entrenched scepticism
 
under the influence of Sartre and Camus,
the Existentialists, whose ideas dominated
the Western World, and my university years,
however nowadays incredible, a time when
Van Cliburn, a Classical music pianist, 
would return from a sealed Communist
Russia, no less, to a New York ticker tape
parade, a more idealistic time than our
present more rapacious, morally bankrupt,
apparently, epoch, I’d believed in Being
and Nothingness, and the corollary Absurd,
I was alone in an indifferent Universe
 
to assume spirits, an extraterrestrial entity
who might be responsive, would require
an act of absolute faith, a profound
disorder in my otherwise determinedly
rational perspective
 
but I had no choice but to succumb to
even irrationality, I knew, for any chance
of grace, you need to believe in miracles
to experience them  
 
need I say that I found that transcendence,
I called it crossing the Bridge of Faith
 
where everything was the same but
different, Nemo, like crossing through a
mirror, like Alice, and discovering another,
infinitely more enchanted, however
numinous and otherworldly, world   
      
 
Richard
 
 
 
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March 12, 2013

Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (9)

 
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2013 16:20:33 +0000
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
 

Richard,

You wrote, “I am at the most aware of only one thought, that thought being that
something is thinking,”

Unless you argue that something can think without a thought, there are at least two thoughts here. First, the awareness that something is thinking. Second, if something is thinking, that something is thinking a thought. As you said, “consciousness of my consciousness”. There are two “consciousness”:

There is a thinker who is thinking a thought, and there is an observer who is thinking of the thinker. If the thinker and the observer are the same, the thought becomes an infinite recursion, like an image reflected in two parallel mirrors. This is partly why I said people who speculate this have way too much time, in fact, only eternity would suffice.

the world and everything in it is in the eye of the beholder

Where is the beholder himself, if everything is in his eye? Does the world exist when the beholder closes his eye?

 

 

you’ve grasped the Cartesian dilemma,
Nemo, the solipsistic circumference – see
“This is the census“ again on that last
series of sibilants – that defines our, not
eternal, as you suggest, but very “mortal
coil“, our incarnate cage, or soul, if you
many parts“, or woman, solipsistically
and fatally, however remarkable, or
even historic, their contribution
  
Plato died, Proust died, either leaving
merely ephemeral ideas and, however
celebrated and honoured, dust
 
it is a frightening, and sobering, conclusion,
we cannot escape the prison of our reason
but with the key alone of our imagination,
for everything beyond the logic of that first
statement is conjecture, the play of our fears
and desires 
 
something is thinking, I think, then identify
with, become the vessel of, that idea, or, if
you prefer, that thought
 
that thought is still a conjecture, but it has
an immediacy you can’t deny, it is your
entire, quite literally, reality 
 
but any other thought is of course also
conjecture, just without the manifest
incontrovertibility of the idea of one’s own
existence, my orange might be your red,
but I’ll never be you, or what I interpret as
you, which is not at all how the other guy
sees you either, my lens is merely my
picture of the world, what is real 
 
reason has done a great job of holding it
all together for most of us, but it rests
fundamentally on the wings of our fallible,
of course, imagination, but for the absolute
apparently miracle of mathematics, which
seems to subsist even without our
speculation, popping up like signposts
everywhere, an existential guardian angel,
Pythagoras, maybe, was right  
 
not even dimensions, Nemo, I woke up
after a week in a coma, a car accident, in
a white room, quiet, empty, with only what
seemed like motes floating on a ray of light
coming in from a window, still, ethereal, and
perhaps, I wondered, part of a new afterlife,
who knew, I couldn’t assume I was alive, I
only knew that I existed in an unfamiliar
environment  
 
height, I reasoned, and width, I thought,
were evident, there are at least here two
dimensions, and calmly contemplated
the possibility of the same exile the villains
had felt early in “Superman“, cast away in
their two-dimensional prisons
 
Kant was wrong, I concluded, we do not
assume time and space as initial certainties,
I don’t have depth yet   
 
later a nurse came in from the centre of my
frame creating at least the impression of a
third spatial element, after which I
concentrated on getting better
 
that my first thought was of Kant after a
week in a coma has remained for me a
searing example of my essentially
cerebral proclivities, be they ever
nevertheless so fundamentally
unsubstantiated, I think that’s a riot
 
 
“Does the world exist when the beholder closes
his eye“, you ask 
 
who knows
 
though I would think so
 
 
Richard   
 
 
 
 
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March 6, 2013

Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (6)‏

 
Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2013 20:54:23 +0000
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
 

Hi Richard,

Actually Plotinus posited a memory model that might be quite similar to yours if I understand you correctly. There are three components in this model, the object stored in our memory, our act of remembering as if retrieving an object from storage, and the activated/retrieved image of the object in our mind. To answer your friend’s retort, we are all three components combined, though most prominent in the second component.

You object to the idea of thoughts having their object existence outside our consciousness, but you agree that we’re aware of our thoughts at the same time as we’re aware of our own existence. Is that a fair representation of your position?

If so, thoughts have just as valid an existence in our consciousness as ourselves. Ergo, there are thoughts. 🙂

P.S. People who speculate on this stuff have way too much time on their hands

if I haven’t replied forthwith, Nemo, to your
comment, it is that I found myself with too
little time on my hands to do other things
that required my more immediate, in my
opinion, attention, though I believe time
spent speculating is never a waste of
“way too much time on [one’s} hands“,
where would Plato be, or Descartes, or
Russell, Nietzsche, Proust, yes, Proust,
my most revered lingerer, and the answer
to all my philosophical prayers, but that’s
another story I’m sure we’ll get to, if they
hadn’t dawdled around profundities 
 
and who’s to say we’re not up to the
mark, and who could say we are, but
for conversations that test the waters,
like this one
 
so I, for one, will deliberate when I get
the chance, which, incidentally, is not a
lot of the time, despite objections that I
might be nevertheless still wasting it 
 
and I return to the fray like a kid to a
very candy shop
 
thanks
 
 
let me point out that Plato would be
proud of us, would’ve been proud of
us, to whose time frame should we
here, do you think, refer, I think Plato
this time could take prominence, if
you’ll allow this playful speculative
divergence
  
 
this, our talk, is his Socrates discussing
with his Euthyphro, or his other acolytes,
ephebes, describing the Socratic Method,
Nemo, we’re carrying on the tradition,
which 2500 years later still vigorously
applies
 
Plato, incidentally, c. 428 BC – c. 347 BC
 
 
there are a few problems in your argument,
from my perspective, you say “you agree that
we’re aware of our thoughts at the same time as
we’re aware of our own existence”, but that’s an
extrapolation, I am at the most aware of only
one thought, that thought being that
something is thinking, no more, no less
 
but reason interjects, applies itself to
consciousness, and concludes that
something has just thought, the element
of time and memory enters the fray here,
but not yet explicitly, they are the
handmaidens of consciousness 
 
if something is thinking, which by the very
act of thinking this I am doing, something
must be doing it, I’ve already conceived of
this consciousness as, for me, irrefutably
real, having had already an impression
of it 
 
whatever other impression I might add to
this composite, however, is arbitrary and
therefore moot with respect to what might
actually philosophically be real
 
the world and everything in it is in the eye
of the beholder 
 
think about it
 
 
thoughts are an extrapolation from all
that we can be sure we know, but all
of it is nothing more than a dream
 
see Shakespeare
 
          “………………………..We are such stuff
           As dreams are made on; and our little life
            Is rounded with a sleep.”
 
                                             “The Tempest“ – act 4, scene 1
                                                                            lines 156 -158  
 
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
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