A couple of questions...

Dark Artist

I've been reading a few threads here, so before I start I just have to say that I'm not as informed as most of you are on various philosophical theories, but I have read up on some basic philosophy in some books, so I'm just going by what I've read/heard. I just want to throw some ideas out there and hear what people have to say about them.

There's an idea I've had that's always nagged me... it's the idea that everything in the world is only there because I see it. I have never, and will never see the world through anyone else's eyes but my own, so how can I possibly know if everything else exists as separate entities from me?

It leads me to the thought that I am everything, including God himself - that there is no further answer to the meaning of life than whatever I decide it to be, because I AM life. You follow??

Another question I'd like discussed is the question of life after death. Here's my theory (and this theory is only true if my previous idea isn't). I can't imagine ceasing to exist after I die, but I must acknowledge that it is possible to not exist, because for the billions of years before I was born I didn't exist, and because that happened, it's possible for it to happen again, and for the world to go on without me even if I'm not here.

I guess I'm just looking for some enlightenment on these two little ideas I have. Are there any arguments for/against them?

Joycey

Dark Artist wrote: »

There's an idea I've had that's always nagged me... it's the idea that everything in the world is only there because I see it. I have never, and will never see the world through anyone else's eyes but my own, so how can I possibly know if everything else exists as separate entities from me?

Well you may have come across the idea of the whole "noumena" and "phenomena" distinction in the "does time exist?" thread on this forum. Basically, phenomena means "to appear", and so phenomenological enquiry deals with things as they appear to us, with an effort there to try and rescue us from simply saying that everything is subjective. Noumena deals with "things in themselves", i.e. as they are in "objective reality", not just as they are perceived by minds like ours. The only way we can talk about noumena is by stipulating metaphysical laws which everything must cohere with.

The answer to the question of "how can I ever be sure of the existence of the external world?", I would say, is that you cant ever be really. However, I think you will find that even the most hardnened philosophical skeptic on this point will still be setting themselves projects, feeding themselves, and manipulating objects in the world, thereby proving their own theory wrong, or at the very least virtually meaningless by their actions.

It leads me to the thought that I am everything, including God himself - that there is no further answer to the meaning of life than whatever I decide it to be, because I AM life. You follow??

Yes I do, at least I think so anyway. A philosopher (who im reading at the moment and hence keep bringing him up ) called Immanual Levinas is one of those phenomenologists I mentioned above, the people who take as their starting point the fact that we exist, and try to describe what it is to be, or what the world is, working from the bottom up, without any metaphysical presuppositions.

One way his thinking relates to the question you asked above, is that he would say that human beings arise from out of "anonymous being" into their subjectivity and into the world (by a complicated mechanism which I wont go into), in a movement akin to waking up in the morning and opening ones eyes to the light of the morning. Light (understood semi-metaphorically) is what allows comprehension, consciousness, subjectivity (me being me), and hence takes us out of anonymous being into a personalised one.

Where in anonymous being all we can say is "there is", in consciousness, we can say this means such and such, or this is such and such. The world is not simply given to us, but it is shaped and we are affected in equal measures. While it would seem that there is something there already to be perceived, it only has significance, or meaning, and only appears the way it does due to our constituting it through our perception and apprehension. It then follows that the world we perceive is in some sense "ours", he even goes so far as to say that we possess the world of our perception.

This is somewhat unrelated to your question but, this is significant for Levinas because he has a saying that "ethics is first philosophy", in other words, that all philosophy is a project in ethics. Its important for him that we "possess", are master of, dominate, the world of our apprehension, because there are certain cases which kind of jolt us out of our world, that represent a rupture in the smooth possessing of all in our environment, and that is the apprehension of the Other in their nakedness (semi-metaphorically again). This idea is essential in all of Levinas (who is an absolutely fantastic writer, probably the most interesting thing ive ever read in my life), and also Derrida later, who is massively popular/fashionable at the moment (but whos a bit of a hot air balloon IMO, to quote a friend).

I hope that made some sense anyway.

One thing that springs to mind actually, is something that came up in that (brilliant) documentary about Bob Dylan that Scorcese made, watched it a couple of days ago. At one point Alan Ginsberg, the beat poet, is talking about Dylan's music, and he ventures a definition of poetry. He says "Poetry is words that are empowered to make your hair stand on end, that you realize instantly as being some form of subjective truth that has an objective reality to it, because somebody has realized it. Then you call it poetry later." That kind of statement is one which I would have to agree with, and its a gracefully practical little sidestep of the whole skepticism issue, which gets a thumbs up from me anyway

Another question I'd like discussed is the question of life after death. Here's my theory (and this theory is only true if my previous idea isn't). I can't imagine ceasing to exist after I die, but I must acknowledge that it is possible to not exist, because for the billions of years before I was born I didn't exist, and because that happened, it's possible for it to happen again, and for the world to go on without me even if I'm not here.

Im not sure exactly what your question is, but (i think) some philosophers would say that in fact you can imagine, or gain some sense of what would happen if you were to die. Heidegger is the one who springs to mind, but I havent read his thinking on it recently enough or have enough knowledge to attempt an explanation, maybe someone else could have a go

Joycey

You might enjoy this discussion of Plato's Cave, which is very relevant to your first question. Its only 10 minutes or so long and should give you a nice introduction to Plato in the process

http://media.libsyn.com/media/philosophybites/BlackburnPlato.mp3

theg81der

Hi op! On the theme of everything exists because I`m watching have you ever heardof the split atom experiment?

CuriousOne

Joycey wrote: »

You might enjoy this discussion of Plato's Cave, which is very relevant to your first question. Its only 10 minutes or so long and should give you a nice introduction to Plato in the process

http://media.libsyn.com/media/philosophybites/BlackburnPlato.mp3

If you can accept death as a finality, that is, that the mind, spirit and consciousness expire when the body dies, then of course life is subjective.

Really enjoy your posts Joycey.

Gary L

Your consciousness will go out with your body I'm afraid, but while your alive you are pretty much god in your world, the center of your universe. Reality exists on every level at the same time- the sub atomic, the cellular, our level which we perceive as big, and the higher levels in which we are bacteria. We cant fully perceive reality so our brains create perceptual bubbles. Inside our minds we attribute value and meaning to the things in our world, and we can consciously control both the size of the bubble and the nature of it.
If you can diminish the ego, which is the neural mechanism that interprets all events by their relevance to you,and is chiefly concerned with your perceptions, its possible to learn much more about the world and to be much happier.

Cannibal Ox

I always think it is interesting that these discussions take the subject as isolated from their context. Norbert Elias has an interesting take on that, some of which is available here. Elias was a sociologist, and his arguement (simply put) is that human beings are interdependant of each other, and that philosophers made the mistake of not recognising the interdependant relations between human beings, and because of this they approached questions like does the world exist only because I percieve it from the position of the thinking subject as independant of the world.

Elias's idea of interpendcy has some similliarities with some philosphers. You've got David Bohm's idea of Wholeness, and you could look in to ideas like Deleuze and Guattari's idea of multiplicity, and possibly Foucault's concept of power, which, you could say, doesn't assume that the individual is somehow seperate and independant from the world.

What am I saying? If you approach the question

everything in the world is only there because I see it.

You're assuming that there is no connection between you and the object you see, but there might be a connection, whether it is a question of interdependency between two objects, or the relation of power between two objects, or through a concept of wholeness, and if there is connection then the question is wrong, because it assumes there is no connection. Instead, you could ask, do you, and the world, only exist, because you see it, and it sees you? If no one saw you, would you exist? Could you exist independantly of the world?