Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2013 20:54:23 +0000
To: Richibi’s Weblog
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.”
lines 156 -158
Richard
Richibi's Weblog 