Given your assumptions that we let the universe be infinite and the your conclusion. I do not see how they follow. We can have no boundaries between us and the world with the universe being finite too.

So this is saying there is no fundamental, permanent boundary between you and the air around you, and the ground, and the earth, and on and on. This limitless universe can be visualized as being one, due to the absence of true, permanent boundaries.

Further more, l like this principle of looking at the bigger picture but even if the universe was finite, we can still have the psychological satisfaction of being a part or being one will everything. How does what what you say below allow us any more freedom than a finite universe.

What are the implications of this perspective? It means you are one with All, by being part of an infinite universe. There is no boundary or limit between you and everything around you. It also means with the lack of true innate boundaries in the universe, everything in it is constantly mixing, creating the balance we see in the universe. It also means you can free yourself from a finite perspective where you focus on finite things like job, house, family, etc. You can adopt an infinite perspective and weave these important things like job, house, family, into a free-flowing infinite web that is part of the infinite web of the universe.

And we can say that observable universe was one at a point in time before the Big Bang, when it was a small point of infinitely dense energy. — DanielP

Infinitely dense energy never bangs or rebounds or does anything but keep on accepting more density if more energy comes along.

The Big Bang, if it comes from compression, would bang precisely because there cannot be infinite density.

Let’s say All – the universe and everything known and unknown outs there - is infinite – aka limitless, unbounded. — DanielP

'Boundless' is better to say, for an infinite extent cannot be extant; it cannot be capped and thus it can't have any being as 'infinite'.

a free-flowing infinite web that is part of the infinite web of the universe.

Whens

Life’s a web, of whos, whys, whats, and hows,
Stretched as time between eternal boughs.
Gossamer threads bear the beads that glisten,
Each moment a sequence of instant nows.

An infinite universe results in strange phenomena such as:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/360596

That is to say, everything that is must logically repeat itself in time and in space - go forward or back in time far enough and there will be an identical copy of you, the earth, this whole galaxy. Likewise go left or right far enough in space and you will find similar identical copies. In fact an infinite number of copies in both cases. This is one of the reasons why I personally do not believe in actual infinity or an infinite universe.

There is no boundary or limit between you and everything around you. It also means with the lack of true innate boundaries in the universe, everything in it is constantly mixing, creating the balance we see in the universe. It also means you can free yourself from a finite perspective where you focus on finite things like job, house, family, etc. You can adopt an infinite perspective and weave these important things like job, house, family, into a free-flowing infinite web that is part of the infinite web of the universe. This also means that the finite labels we apply to things are approximations of an infinite reality. We can apply labels like tree, but a tree is infinite. We can know some things about trees, but not everything. We can say, “you are a man or a woman” and be correct, but still just be making an approximation. You are a vast collection of complex infinity in your own right.

Looking forward to a good discussion. — DanielP

I agree with you. I'd call this the speculative truth. For practical reasons, we often have to understand ourselves as a meat-box of thoughts and feelings, navigating a world that is not us. I like your web metaphor. All individual things get their meaning from their relationships to other things. To understand a cat is to understand mice is to understand cheese is to understand cows. 'No finite thing has genuine existence.' We rip out a 'thing' from the web. We yank out (ab-stract) an entity with a focus that ignores its essential interdependence with respect to all other things.

Anyway, there's a clever version of this presented in I Heart Huckabbees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kB_mOfvDPU

That seems like a true assessment. Why do you find it unattractive that there might be somebody far away that is just like you?

I agree with you. If the world is unbounded, then why do you think humans focus on boundaries? I wonder if there is a fear of the infinite. For instance, in physics, they say something has gone wrong when infinities are shown, such as in the infinite gravity of black holes, or some people say in the infinitely small point of the Big Bang.

Good video, looks like an interesting movie.

What do you mean that an infinite extent cannot be extant?
Thanks for the response. I don't fully understand the physics of the Big Bang, but you seem to think it was not an infinitely small point of infinite energy? What do you think it was?

it was not an infinitely small point of infinite energy? — DanielP

'Infinity' is a sign of a formula breaking down, such as Einstein's; however, he is saved because particles are not points but have extension, this being like the 'quantum' in quantum mechanics; thus there can be no infinite density, no singularity,, plus 'infinite' is impossible, as it is not an amount, nor can it be reached, this getting more to the heart of the definition of 'infinite', which is more that it never ends…

If the world is unbounded, then why do you think humans focus on boundaries? — DanielP

For practical reasons. We abstract from the totality because it's instrumentally valuable. When I just need a chair for a guest, I don't need to understand how that particular chair came about within the entire history of the world, even if this is a better approximation of the total chair.

For instance, in physics, they say something has gone wrong when infinities are shown, such as in the infinite gravity of black holes, or some people say in the infinitely small point of the Big Bang. — DanielP

This is because the mathematical model breaks down. The connection between pure math and nature is complicated. Popularizations can only gloss over technical complexities.

So what? I don’t mean that is a dismissive manner, just couldn’t find anything to say as you don’t appear to have given any context to this thought or what kind of feedback you’re looking for.

Looking at your replies I guess it may be worth pointing out that the ‘boundaries’ you talk of are necessary for recognition of any state of being. If there are no ‘boundaries’ then there is no consciousness as we’d be unable to differentiate, communicate or do anything much at all - if anything.

Think about how you’d possibly answer any question put to you without any appreciation for boundaries. A simple question like, “Are you cold?” Would never be heard by you because you couldn’t distinguish between hot and cold, nor could you ever hear the words uttered because you’d be unable to distinguish between statements and questions - not to mention silence and sound. In effect you wouldn’t have any sense of existence and little more than a vegetable.

Maybe you’re looking for some other kind of response here? If so set it out more clearly please.

I think I know where he's coming from. When I first read Kojeve on Hegel, I was filled with intellectual ecstasy. I understand him to be sharing a beautiful realization.

It means you are one with All, by being part of an infinite universe. There is no boundary or limit between you and everything around you. — DanielP

Perhaps this is what Freud meant by the 'oceanic feeling.'

In a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland coined the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole," inspired by the example of Ramakrishna.[1][2] According to Rolland, this feeling is the source of all the religious energy that permeates in various religious systems, and one may justifiably call oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one renounces every belief and every illusion.[3] Freud discusses the feeling in his Future of an Illusion (1927) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). There he deems it a fragmentary vestige of a kind of consciousness possessed by an infant who has not yet differentiated himself or herself from other people and things.[4] — Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_feeling

Nietzsche analyzes Christ in a similar way.

What the “glad tidings” tell us is simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of heaven belongs to children; the faith that is voiced here is no more an embattled faith—it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit.... A faith of this sort is not furious, it does not de nounce, it does not defend itself: it does not come with “the sword”—it does not realize how it will one day set man against man. It does not manifest itself either by miracles, or by rewards and promises, or by “scriptures”: it is itself, first and last, its own miracle, its own reward, its own promise, its own “kingdom of God.” This faith does not formulate itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. It is only on the theory that no work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. — Nietzsche

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm

The OP isn't so radical as to 'guard itself against formulae.' But this ecstastic idea of all-is-one does break down dissolve all merely apparent (for it) conflict and separation.

And? Again, not being dismissive here - or I wouldn’t bother posting. Just looking for something to discuss as I don’t see anything put forward for discussion yet.

I think this connects to one's conception of philosophy. Should it be poetic and/or 'spiritual'? Personally I think that it must be. We care about these things. And if we want philosophy to be quasi-scientific, then even that is a manifestation of our passion for objectivity, scientificity, practicality.

Hegel is one of my favorites, and he conceived of philosophy as doing conceptually what religion did imaginatively. I think there is truth in that. Feuerbach made it clearer, I think.

That Feuerbach, unlike Strauss, never accepted Hegel’s characterization of Christianity as the consummate religion is clear from the contents of a letter he sent to Hegel along with his dissertation in 1828.[7] In this letter he identified the historical task remaining in the wake of Hegel’s philosophical achievement to be the establishment of the “sole sovereignty of reason” in a “kingdom of the Idea” that would inaugurate a new spiritual dispensation. Foreshadowing arguments put forward in his first book, Feuerbach went on in this letter to emphasize the need for

the I, the self in general, which especially since the beginning of the Christian era, has ruled the world and has thought of itself as the only spirit that exists at all [to be] cast down from its royal throne. (GW v. 17, Briefwechsel I (1817–1839), 103–08)

This, he proposed, would require prevailing ways of thinking about time, death, this world and the beyond, individuality, personhood and God to be radically transformed within and beyond the walls of academia.

Feuerbach made his first attempt to challenge prevailing ways of thinking about individuality in his inaugural dissertation, where he presented himself as a defender of speculative philosophy against those critics who claim that human reason is restricted to certain limits beyond which all inquiry is futile, and who accuse speculative philosophers of having transgressed these. This criticism, he argued, presupposes a conception of reason is a cognitive faculty of the individual thinking subject that is employed as an instrument for apprehending truths. He aimed to show that this view of the nature of reason is mistaken, that reason is one and the same in all thinking subjects, that it is universal and infinite, and that thinking (Denken) is not an activity performed by the individual, but rather by “the species” acting through the individual. “In thinking”, Feuerbach wrote, “I am bound together with, or rather, I am one with—indeed, I myself am—all human beings” (GW I:18).

In the introduction to Thoughts Feuerbach assumes the role of diagnostician of a spiritual malady by which he claims that modern moral subjects are afflicted. This malady, to which he does not give a name, but which he might have called either individualism or egoism, he takes to be the defining feature of the modern age insofar as this age conceives of “the single human individual for himself in his individuality […] as divine and infinite” (GTU 189/10). The principal symptom of this malady is the loss of “the perception [Anschauung] of the true totality, of oneness and life in one unity” (GTU 264/66). — link

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ludwig-feuerbach/

Some might find this too squishy. My view is that certain philosophical problems are the result of taking the isolated ego as an unquestioned starting point. In an obsession with personal certainty, one neglects the being of the 'I,' which is mostly a we. For me it's not about hidden spiritual machinery but the naked-yet-taken-for-granted fact (however slippery) of being in a language together. I think it's hard to overstate how historical and social human existence is.

Infinitely dense energy never bangs or rebounds or does anything but keep on accepting more density if more energy comes along.

The Big Bang, if it comes from compression, would bang precisely because there cannot be infinite density. — PoeticUniverse

If the world is unbounded, then why do you think humans focus on boundaries? — DanielP

We abstract from the totality because it's instrumentally valuable. — softwhere

A map is bounded. A territory - e.g. Earth's surface - is unbounded. Maps of an unbounded territory are mere drops in the oceanic. ( beat me to it :up: )

I’m squishy like a peach with a stone at its centre: holding it together. Some may have sloughed off their ‘metaphysical’ flesh, or become rotten to the core. I believe my ‘stone’ is intact and matured enough and readily able to plant deep into the earth of humanity.

My point is, what is there is discuss here? I’ll await the OP’s assessment and allow you to cool yourself in the shade of my boughs (pretentious as I am ;))

I’m squishy like a peach with a stone at its centre: holding it together — I like sushi

I relate, if I understand you correctly. I love phenomenology. I fear that some will categorize it as mysticism, while the mystical-religious types might object that it still an 'atheism' that wants to be scientific in a high philosophical sense.

I believe you like Husserl. So do I. I recently read his Crisis and thought it was great. He's now on my list of favorites.


Thanks for the thumbs up. I like your way of putting it.

‘Crisis’ is an incomplete mess. I do tend towards a ‘phenomenological’ view of things, but in reality it is probably not much like what Husserl was trying to do - I believe he may have pushed too hard, and after him Heidegger and the likes went even more off-piste.

I have certainly come across many who are far too willing to dismiss Husserl. I cannot blame them tbh as on the surface it looks quite dubious. It does require a certain fortitude to understand he is talking about self-made boundaries and limits, about the grounding of Logic, whilst being someone who sings the praise of ‘sciences’.

I don’t think I could honestly say I ‘like’ any philosophers/philosophies. Some I find more interesting than others, but all-in-all I have more respect for those that do their best to articulate their findings and thoughts, so ‘philosophers’ rarely fall into that category tbh. There’s a glimpse in Husserl, but I’d hardly say he does much better or worse than any other.

Out of them all, to date, Kant has impressed me the most. Still relevant to this day even though many wish to package him as some ‘religious’ figure every now and then.

Today I’d call most philosophers either embittered individuals attempting to smuggle ideologies through under the guise of ‘philosophy’, or scholars of previous philosophers (the later I can respect if they temper their bias as much as impose their own will).

Dead philosophers are also much easier to assess than living. The living do too much ‘talking’ and not enough ‘saying’. I think it is plain enough to see from entires on philosophy forums that a large contingent ‘attracted’ to this area of interest are generally trying to create a cult from themselves. Baby steps ... I prefer godhood ;)

‘Crisis’ is an incomplete mess. — I like sushi

But it's still good! It's like Husserl blended with Hegel and Heidegger.

I have certainly come across many who are far too willing to dismiss Husserl. I cannot blame them tbh as on the surface it looks quite dubious. It does require a certain fortitude to understand he is talking about self-made boundaries and limits, about the grounding of Logic, whilst being someone who sings the praise of ‘sciences’. — I like sushi

It's strange though that even a PhD in math is still suspicious when he gets philosophical. But I get it. I work in math, and lots of mathematicians are even anti-philosophical. But this leaves math and what it means hanging in the air. I suggest that the mystique of science (as opposed to squishy philosophy) primarily manifests our love of technology. 'If it ain't gear, it ain't here.'

I don’t think I could honestly say I ‘like’ any philosophers/philosophies. Some I find more interesting than others, but all-in-all I have more respect for those that do their best to articulate their findings and thoughts, so ‘philosophers’ rarely fall into that category tbh. There’s a glimpse in Husserl, but I’d hardly say he does much better or worse than any other. — I like sushi

I'm surprised you don't like more philosophers. I can understand frustrations with bad style, needless jargon, etc.

Today I’d call most philosophers either embittered individuals attempting to smuggle ideologies through under the guise of ‘philosophy’, or scholars of previous philosophers (the later I can respect if they temper their bias as much as impose their own will). — I like sushi

Is it smuggling though? I consider it the explicit projection of an ideology. I do think we are all biased and not as rational as we claim to be or would like to be. But that's why I like to think of an evolving conversation. I loved Lee Braver's A Thing of This World for organizing the tradition of anti-realism for presentation for an analytic-leaning audience. And this is why I love Hegel. He made this accumulative-dialectical-historical evolution of philosophy explicit.

Dead philosophers are also much easier to assess than living. The living do too much ‘talking’ and not enough ‘saying’. I think it is plain enough to see from entires on philosophy forums that a large contingent ‘attracted’ to this area of interest are generally trying to create a cult from themselves. Baby steps ... I prefer godhood ;) — I like sushi

I agree that philosophy types tend to be cult-leader types. I also prefer godhood. For me there's this complex idea that one becomes godlike by assimilating the genius of others. So the arrogant goal requires (strangely) a deep humility. This theme of vanity seems central to me. For me one of the marks of the wrong kind of arrogance (those mere baby steps) is not acknowledging how many of one's best ideas were stolen, inherited. The short-lived human being is nothing without the language he learned to speak and the conversations he's been a part of (often passively, as a reader.)

The cult-leader always has 'golden tablets,' freshly delivered by an angel --instant omniscience, just add water a small donation.

But it's still good! It's like Husserl blended with Hegel and Heidegger. — softwhere

I’ve not read much of Hegel yet. Started POS, but then my interested turned elsewhere. Heidegger ... I’ve not the time nor inclination to voice my full dislike, but I still found use in B&T. I’m still working through Logical Investigations, but I wax and wane between subject areas quite a lot. Just starting to feel the ‘philosophical funk’ awaken again.

I'm surprised you don't like more philosophers. I can understand frustrations with bad style, needless jargon, etc. — softwhere

Maybe I wasn’t clear. I don’t ‘like’ any. I do admire Nietzsche for being a ‘non-philosopher’ and brutally honest, and Husserl for hesitating to call what he was doing ‘philosophy’. The rest, just the odd good scholar in between the Ancient peoples of the world, Descartes and Kant as far as I can see (which isn’t all that far).

Philosophers are just living black boxes. Once you pull them from the wreckage of humanity and look at what they regurgitate at you it’s often nothing much other than a bland drone of altitudes and bearings - with some caught in turbulence mistaking their view as ‘original’.

Yeah, I can wax lyrical too, so what? That is still my point. What use is a nebulous statement for a meaningful discussion? May as well consult a random recipe braindead-ironic-neuroatheist style (referring to the dead-eyed intellectually empty mouth farts from a guy whose name thankfully evades me - even if he does make some sense some of the time).

I’ve not read much of Hegel yet. Started POS, but then my interested turned elsewhere. — I like sushi

I got into Hegel via Kojeve, translated by Allan Bloom. I thought the English prose was great, and it was Hegel from an atheistic point of view, influenced by Heidegger and Marx. I'll always love this book for blowing my mind. I haven't read every page of POS. I've learned quite a bit from secondary sources. And then the lectures he taught from are surprisingly clear. His theory of art is great, and there's a great Hegel In His Own Words biography that really impressed me. He could give rousing speeches, so clear, and yet write some very difficult prose.

but I still found use in B&T. — I like sushi

I like Division I, the basic examination of being-in-the-world. The death stuff is somewhat fascinating but suspect. I also like Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity. And then Braver's work on the later Heidegger rescues it for me from some highly suspect prose. I do think that we're dominated perhaps by the spirit of technology. Though I don't see any easy path forward.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. I don’t ‘like’ any. I do admire Nietzsche for being a ‘non-philosopher’ and brutally honest, and Husserl for hesitating to call what he was doing ‘philosophy’. The rest, just the odd good scholar in between the Ancient peoples of the world, Descartes and Kant as far as I can see (which isn’t all that far). — I like sushi

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I've read Nietzsche pretty closely. He's such a glorious mess that figuring out what to make of him is like figuring out who one is in one's 20s (when I was especially taken by him.)
Husserl is fairly new to me. Derrida got me interested. Like many I've tried to cheat and work backwards. Rorty got me interested in Heidegger, Kojeve in Hegel, etc. You didn't mention Hume. No love for Hume?

Philosophers are just living black boxes. Once you pull them from the wreckage of humanity and look at what they regurgitate at you it’s often nothing much other than a bland drone of altitudes and bearings - with some caught in turbulence mistaking their view as ‘original’. — I like sushi

I think there's truth in what you say. But to me that's the human condition. Philosophers are like articulate especially maniacal types. What stand shall we take on our existence? What shall we spend our time talking about? I also love fiction, music, etc. But philosophy scratches the itch to make one's orientation explicit. A kind of suspect 'non-fiction' that is also 'obviously' just heroic roleplay. We carve little identities out of words. Politics looks to me like applied philosophy, including apolitical passivity and cynicism (which I preferred for most of my life and is still defensible, really.)

But all cynicism aside, I really love good conversation. The futility or absurdity of philosophy is more interesting topic for the philosopher.

Yeah, I can wax lyrical too, so what? That is still my point. What use is a nebulous statement for a meaningful discussion? May as well consult a random recipe braindead-ironic-neuroatheist style (referring to the dead-eyed intellectually empty mouth farts from a guy whose name thankfully evades me - even if he does make some sense some of the time). — I like sushi

I like 'mouth farts.' Zizek? Peterson? As Kant saw (not that I'm a Kant expert, but I like him), we just can't resist metaphysics. We are metaphorical-metaphysical-mythological animals. Bleed us of our dreams and there's nothing left. But Kardashians selling lipstick and becoming billionaires via social media fame. I've been studying Guy Debord lately, known for The Society of The Spectacle.
https://vimeo.com/60328678

I think philosophy often has a kind of negative glamour, like the sexy gloom of an existentialist. Sartre wrote somewhere that he wanted fame to get women. I won't accuse all philosophers of this, but perhaps there is a sexual display in the trans-scientific attitudes of various philosophers. The game is to project access to some difficult but valuable object. All one has to do is understand the magic words. At the same time, I think the 'magic words' often work, that one feels relatively illuminated. If all of this is illusion, then this too seems like a philosophical view, one that sides with power via technology.
It's complex, and I have mouth-farted too much already.

Was referring to Sam Harris and his discussion with Peterson where he rambled about a recipe (?). Basically he gave an example of how he could read a list of ingredients for a dish and glean mystical insight from it (it was meant to show how meaningless religious interpretation can be). He missed that the words coming out his mouth were an expression of values though, he was seemingly unaware of the force a narrative has for carrying ‘emotional’/‘moral’ weight.

I am both positive and negative about Zizek and Peterson for completely different reasons. Sam Harris I’d rank below both of them - quite far below them.

We’ll have to at it over Heidegger sometime. I’ve yet to find someone who can show me what ‘Dasein’ means in Heidegger’s own words - I’ve been told it helps to read his previous works, but honestly I’ve better things to do (a few selective quotes from previous works would be nice regarding ‘dasein’ if you can manage it? No else has been able to present anything to date to entice me).

Dead philosophers are also much easier to assess than living. The living do too much ‘talking’ and not enough ‘saying’. — I like sushi

:up:

We are metaphorical-metaphysical-mythological animals. Bleed us of our dreams and there's nothing left. — softwhere

Alliterationcy's :cool:

That seems like a true assessment. Why do you find it unattractive that there might be somebody far away that is just like you? — DanielP

I find the notion that there are an actually infinite number of identical me/planet earth/this galaxy in time and/or space to be absurd, so I tend to regard the argument I gave as Reductio ad absurdum.

Spacetime began with the BB 14 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since at a finite rate - so spacetime is logically finite.

If you could sit in an armchair and watch the BB unfold, what would you observe? Well GR says that time is observed to run slower in a gravitational field and we have experimental evidence that supports the theoretical claim, so:

1. One billion years after the BB, matter density is not so high, so time is observed to run relatively quickly.
2. One million years after the BB, matter density is higher so time is observed to run slower
3. One second after the BB, matter density is very high, so time seems to be almost at a standstill
4. At the moment of the BB, no-one knows what happens to time, but you can see the pattern.

We’ll have to at it over Heidegger sometime. — I like sushi

Well I can try to explain what I find valuable. But I don't read German. For me studying Heidegger further illuminated Hegel and Feuerbach and Wittgenstein. Then Culler's book on Saussure fits in too. I just read that one and it further illuminate Derrida (the 'perfected Heidegger' some have said.)

(a few selective quotes from previous works would be nice regarding ‘dasein’ if you can manage it? — I like sushi

Heidegger is already using 'Dasein' in Ontology, which I have on hand, but doesn't offer a definition, probably because it's a common German word, which he is further specifying through context and what he does with it. To escape bias, I'll just use a German-English dictionary.

https://www.dict.cc/german-english/Dasein.html

It means 'to be there' or 'to be around.' I think that Heidegger was just trying to get around an encrusted tradition and talk about the 'subject' or the 'rational animal' with fresh eyes.

I'm sure you've seen this in B&T, but it's at least Heidegger being explicit.

This being, which we ourselves in each case are and which includes inquiry among the possibilities of its being, we formulate terminologically as Dasein. — Heidegger / Stambough translation, top of page 7

Since the who of everyday Dasein is 'one' rather than 'I,' I think it was a good move. To me the philosophical prejudice that we are isolated subjects in a mind-box was a primary target of the analytic.
The 'beetle in a box' point made by Wittgenstein seems to get at the same kind of thing. What we are tempted to take as a hidden interior is primarily exterior. Pinkard's book on Hegel's POS (The Sociality of Reason) presents Hegel in something like today's terminology, and seems related. I chose the name 'softwhere' for this primary object of fascination for me, the way we exist culturally, more we than I[, largely in language but also through music, etc.

He missed that the words coming out his mouth were an expression of values though, he was seemingly unaware of the force a narrative has for carrying ‘emotional’/‘moral’ weight. — I like sushi

Ah, I see. I'm am very much with you on 'the force of narrative.' I think we humans qua human exist on that level, on the level of the ideality of the literary object, some of which are the instrumental (non-)fictions of science. The scientific image is grounded in the manifest image and yet aims at the ground of the manifest image.

Guys what a fantastic discussion. I got to read more philosophy when my 3 and 4 year old kids get older. You guys are motivating me to do that.

This is certainly quasi-philosophy, science, religion stuff. I've always been interested in the biggest picture possible. And when I propose an infinite world, i mean its infinite in respects to all potential ways to characterize it - quantity of matter, variety of matter, time, dimensions, etc. I think that yes, it may seem there are boundaries between things, and yes these boundaries may seem important in making sense of things. But I think those boundaries are temporary and ultimately fade away in a sense over time. Think about any animal making boundaries of its territory - it's temporary. The map of the boundaries of human civilizations has changed so much that it is unrecognizable over a thousand year time span.

Why does it matter? Because if we think finite, then our perspective is finite. We pigeonhole ourselves and others in these closed off finite positions - for example politics where we assume the other political side believe only in xyz, and we believe in abc, so there's so compromise. In science, if we think finite, we stop asking questions and just assume we have reached as far back as we go with the Big Bang. Those physicists pushing the envelope and peering into infinity to develop theories for what caused the Big Bang truly have a large perspective. If we think finite, well I guess we'll stop digging smaller in quantum world. I suppose the quark and those other subatomic particles are really the smallest building blocks of matter. After all, if the world is finite, there is a theoretical fundamental particle building block beyond which we cannot go smaller. If we think finite, we see only 3 or possibly 4 moves with our careers. If we think infinite, we are aware of those 3 or 4 moves and are open to the infinity of possibilities that could happen to our career.

If you could sit in an armchair and watch the BB unfold, what would you observe? Well GR says that time is observed to run slower in a gravitational field and we have experimental evidence that supports the theoretical claim, so:

1. One billion years after the BB, matter density is not so high, so time is observed to run relatively quickly.
2. One million years after the BB, matter density is higher so time is observed to run slower
3. One second after the BB, matter density is very high, so time seems to be almost at a standstill
4. At the moment of the BB, no-one knows wha[t] happens to time, but you can see the pattern. — Devans99

:cool:

For those not familiar with this line of thought: Hartle-Hawking No Boundary conjecture. (Maybe no "big bang" at all, just a white hole-like Q-tunneling from a higher (false?) vacuum ... analogous to a twist that transforms a [plane] into a Möbius loop?)

Guys what a fantastic discussion. I got to read more philosophy when my 3 and 4 year old kids get older. You guys are motivating me to do that. — DanielP

If I were I’d go out right now and buy a copy of Piaget’s ‘The Language and Thought of a Child’, or any number of works on child development. Even though it is old stuff it’s still relevant today and will open up a whole host of questions related to your life experience watching our children grow up.

Why does it matter? Because if we think finite, then our perspective is finite. — DanielP

We’ve become more acquainted with concepts of ‘infinite’ lately because we’re finite not in spite of our finitude. In exploring the universe we’ve moved from an infinite self in a finite world to a finite self in an infinite world. This is something Eliade does a superb job of digging into in “The Sacred and The Profane”.

I like to look at sedentary living playing a huge role in the paradigm shift from a more nomadic lifestyle - even though ‘mobile’ homes would bring the element that interests me into play. The idea is that nature is vast, boundless and limitless, and in creating a homestead and ‘shutting out’ nature to some degree we took on the role of a pretend ‘god’. We were able to dictate every corner of our abode to suit our will and creativity where in nature we were ‘ruled over’. The irony is by ‘shutting out’ we necessarily shut ourselves in too - this is the shift in our regard for the world as ‘finite’ or ‘infinite’. Also, we are in the habit of thinking about ‘finite’ and ‘infinite’ in terms of magnitudes of space and time. Again, this wasn’t/isn’t an issue for tribal life because they didn’t house time in clocks or space in buildings - their world s a lost world of the ‘infinite’ in the sense of being experienced without demarcations of time or space in anything like our modern comprehension.

As the other person pointed out above - in reference - the Humean worldview has more relation to this more ‘raw’ experience of our world. We’re not empty receptacles of information - no tabla rasa - we impose ourselves on the world and project our view outward, perhaps more than we are under the ‘rule’ of what is extraneous to our ‘felt’ bodily limits.

You do sound like you’d be more interested in ideas regarding panpsychism - that’s not really for me as I find the terms used more obtuse and misleading than even Derrida or Heidegger!

I'm sure you've seen this in B&T, but it's at least Heidegger being explicit.

This being, which we ourselves in each case are and which includes inquiry among the possibilities of its being, we formulate terminologically as Dasein.
— Heidegger / Stambough translation, top of page 7 — softwhere

The problem is how this fits in with everything else he says in terms of ‘Dasein’. It’s contrary and I suspect he was quite purposeful in how he was trying to hoodwink the reader. Huge lumps of text he wrote in B&T were frustratingly pointless. I don’t trust writers if they lead you on a merry dance to say something that could’ve been summed up in a couple of paragraphs. That said, it is forgivable on occasion, but when 80% of the entire text needn’t be there I’m not impressed.

Derrida is an even worse culprit, but at least he pretty much admitted what he was doing so I can forgive that - Heidegger was merely playing at rewriting Husserl’s ideas (likely because he assumed Husserl’s work would be buried and forgotten). Derrida is far more interesting, but far more post-modern. I have a feeling he could’ve done better trying to be explicit rather than playing with words to show how words can be played with.

There is ‘language’ beyond mere ‘worded language’. It is frankly foolish to ignore this. That is not at all to say that ‘worded language’ is hugely important - or how else would we be communicating now!

I've always been interested in the biggest picture possible. — DanielP

That's what I love about philosophy. It goes for the biggest picture and also the deepest picture.

I think that yes, it may seem there are boundaries between things, and yes these boundaries may seem important in making sense of things. But I think those boundaries are temporary and ultimately fade away in a sense over time. — DanielP

The map of the boundaries of human civilizations has changed so much that it is unrecognizable over a thousand year time span. — DanielP

I agree, and some of my favorite philosophers are focused on time, on the way our 'maps' or human structuring of the 'territory' evolved and evolve historically, basically like a long human conversation. Our individual bodies die, but our stored knowledge and accumulated transformation of the earth means that each generation inherits what all preceding generations left behind (well, what wasn't destroyed or lost.) To me this indicates increasing complexity in the conversation, which is ecstatic if we can bear it. And if we can find the time and will to assimilate it.

This Hegel quote talks about what I meant by 'deepest' picture possible.

What is “familiarly known” is not properly known, just for the reason that it is “familiar”. When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be familiar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, understanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something valid, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. — Hegel

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm

To me philosophy at its best is the opposite of merely going along on the surface of things, which is our ordinary mode in daily life. Of course we have bills to pay, but for me one of the reasons to keep those bills paid, etc., is to be able to live & think philosophy.

The idea is that nature is vast, boundless and limitless, and in creating a homestead and ‘shutting out’ nature to some degree we took on the role of a pretend ‘god’. We were able to dictate every corner of our abode to suit our will and creativity where in nature we were ‘ruled over’. The irony is by ‘shutting out’ we necessarily shut ourselves in too — I like sushi

:clap:

Of course we have bills to pay, but for me one of the reasons to keep those bills paid, etc., is to be able to live & think philosophy. — softwhere

:up: