I like your appreciation for what you call 'the second universe', I think it is full of potential, but the way you organize and manage this concept doesn't seem to me very smart, despite your conclusion about smartness . After all, it looks just like a materialistic conception of what you call the "real" universe. Calling it "real" looks metaphysic, so that the wonders of the second universe are totally slave of the big real universe, totally unable to do anything really new, really different from the big universe. But I appreciate your effort to find a difference, when you try to find things that the seconds universe does and the first one is unable to do.

Ken's law #20. All movements and all actions of any kind can exist, as such, only in the Real Universe. Including actions made by a second universe.

Ken's law #21. No negatives can exist in the Big Bang Universe. — Ken Edwards

You have 19 other laws? Interesting thoughts. I agree, more or less. The inner universe can simulate every process in the outer, physical world. We can mentally shape it and as bodies influence it physically. The body walks between these two worlds. The outer world is continuously projected into our inner world, which resonates and shapes it.

Memories are the same thing: Patterns and arrangements of brain cells. — Ken Edwards

Here, I don't agree. A memory is an active reconstruction of an experience you had. Learning is creating the right substrate for memories to be reconstructed (by strengthening neuron connections).

I partly agree. I should have stated more carefully that the so called (By me) Second Universe is part and parcel of the so called (by me) Real Universe.)

I am an artist, a very good artist, well known for my stoneware. I am not a philosopher nor a scientest, *(although I have read much of both).

But I only read philosopy or science for pleasure and never for learning so I sometimes remember very little of what I read..)

I made no attempt (except perhaps intuitivally) to organize all this. I don't know how. I just wrote it
.
"The smarter than" comment I meant as a joke. A take off on the "my dad can lick your dad" children's line. I should have said, and almost did: "My Second Universe can lick your Second Universe."

My lines are literary and not technical and I feel very highly complimented by some of your lines. I am highly pleased. Thank you .
Ken

I think your definition is incomplete. I learned that we have two different things - Memory and the Recall of eventsl. I learned that memories are only memories of one's own thoughts during the event and are not a reconstruction. But "Recall" is the revisiting of the event and listening and watching the event again. A photographic memory is a good example.

I am personally very aware, alas, of the difference between memory and recall because all my life I have suffered from having very poor recall although I have an excellent memory. I can remember things that occured ninety years ago very clearly. Some eighty years ago I remember that, in college algebra classes during examinations of quadratic equations I could never recall the formulas.

However since I had a firm grasp of the mathematics I just invented my own formulas. This amused my teacher and he alway gave me full credit as long as I got the right. answer.

But also I takemild issue with your other statement -- "Here I disagree."

Both of the mental actions that you describe are "Thinking" and all thinking consists of changing Patterns and Arrangements of brain cells.

I think your definition is incomplete. I learned that we have two different things - Memory and the Recall of eventsl. I learned that memories are only memories of one's own thoughts during the event and are not a reconstruction. But "Recall" is the revisiting of the event and listening and watching the event again. A photographic memory is a good example. — Ken Edwards

If you have learned a math formula, like a quadratic equation, that's because you saw one or invented one in your inner world. Both the physical world and your thoughts about it leave memory trails in your brain. If you see a quadratic equation in front of your nose, examples of it, you get to learn the concept. You can recall them or remember them them because there is a kind of pattern that has been engraved on your neural structure, but that pattern only exists when it's active. When you remember it. The pattern is reconstructed when you think about it. It clicks, or falls, or strangely attracts, to the pattern once imprinted. One neuron is involved in zillions of patterns, so it's not the a memory like on a computer chip (with zeroes and ones patterned) but an implicit memory that gets clear when an already experienced pattern is experienced again. The recall is the clicking into an earlier engraved patter, and only when the pattern actually is reconstructed, can you speak of a memory. So if you are dead, I can't see, by looking in your brain, what memories there still are. That's only to know for a living brain. You brain implicitly contains more memories than it contains particles. A computerchip contains far less memory than it's constituting particles.

My Second Universe can lick your Second Universe." — Ken Edwards

:lol:

What stones do you make? I do treetrunks, which I found out after painting and photographing, is really rewarding. Nature's, around the corner, in a forrest, is full of crazy natural forms. I take them, and live myself out on them. Lovely!

I should have said, and almost did: "My Second Universe can lick your Second Universe." — Ken Edwards

No, you should have said "My Second Universe can lick your Second Universe's arse".

I am an artist, a very good artist, well known for my stoneware. — Ken Edwards

Yes indeed!

Ken Edwards

Yes indeed!

Ken Edwards — jgill

Nice work!

Thank you all! Thank you thank you all. You give me much pleasure!

Hillary. The word stoneware is an inside the trade word meaning "Ceramics Fired at a very high temperature resembling hard Porcelan. The main difference between porcelan and stoneware is that porcelan is always white and stoneware canbe any color. My stoneware, which I made in Mexico, (see google. Ken Edwards pottery.) was a light bluish gray. The stoneware I make in Guatemala is white with a dark brown foot.

I would love to see photos of some of your tree trunks. But I'm not sure how to do that.

All I really want to say here about the Second Universes is the following:

"My second universe is smarter than your second universe".

Ken Edwards — Ken Edwards

OK Ken, I take that as a challenge. How would we decide the truth of this, by our capacity to effect change in the real universe? I would say that the smartest second universe is the one that can exist without having any effect on the real universe. Want to try?

The second universe can make deliberate changes in the real Universe.
An example -- I noticed that there was a brick sitting in the sidewalk across the street and then I walked across the street and I picked up the brick.
Thus my own tiny Universe made deliberate changes in the Big Bang Universe . — Ken Edwards

How about this hypothetical:

Unknown to you, you prevented an event from happening purely due to your presence at a particular place at a particular time.
The details don't matter, what matters is you are completely unaware of how significant your simple presence was to subsequent events. You have no memory of this as there was no reason for your brain to memorialise.
If you had not been there, however, the subsequent events would have been very different. This was nothing to do with your deliberate conscious actions in relation to your concept of your mind as a 'second Universe,' it was merely due to your physical existence due to happenstance (or the actions of your parents...infinite regression of cause and effect) in the big bang Universe.
How would you relate this to your use of 'smartness?'

Btw: Nice stoneware!

I subscribe to the two universes view. Our brain (when you look to the material part of it, so from outside) can simulate all universal processes. Be it an atom, triple ..quarks, dirty sheets, or the angry neighbor, all the things going on in the large universe can be simulated, without a program being involved, like in a computer. These simulations (or other, creative processes) in our microcosmos, on their turn, can shape the physical world, and we (our body) can change the macro cosmos by litterally shaping it. From the inside, the microcosmos is very differently from what an outsider sees, namely the material part only. So including the brain into the macro cosmos, as being a material part of it, is making a categorical mistake.

Angelo. You say "After all, it looks just like a materialistic conception of what you call the "real" universe. Calling it "real" looks metaphysic, so that the wonders of the second universe are totally slave of the big real universe, totally unable to do anything really new, really different from the big universe. But I appreciate your effort to find a difference, when you try to find things that the seconds universe does and the first one is unable to do.[reply=

"Angelo from Ken Edwards.
I very much appreciate that a person of you mental profundity should take me, an amateur, so seriously.

But I don't understand much of it and I would like to, at least partly, understand it.. Could you perhaps give me a simplified explanation? -- populerizng it, so to speak, In the manner Of Isaac Azomoth?

Thank you, Ken Edwards
Cannata;691348"]

You got the question wrong, Janus. The right question is __ Which is best? Lick or get licked?

J Yo
You say - "I would say that the smartest second universe is the one that can exist without having any effect on the real universe. Want to try?"

That would be a total impossibility. For the simple reason that the second universe would be part and parcel of the real universe.

If I should lift a finger that movement would be part of both universes.

Better we play poker or something.

You say - "I would say that the smartest second universe is the one that can exist without having any effect on the real universe. Want to try?"

That would be a total impossibility. For the simple reason that the second universe would be part and parcel of the real universe. — Ken Edwards

The two can't be separated. Like La Madonella belongs in Forio, the interior universe belongs in the exterior universe and they shape and inform each other.

I have seen in your words an attempt to show how great our inner universe (which you call the second universe) is and I appreciate this very much, because I think that today most philosophers all over the world, professionals or not, give too little importance to this. But, at the same time, you still perceive the phisical universe as the real one and the big one. This makes me think that your mind is, like most philosophers, still slave of a perspective that gives too much deference to the “real” universe. Instead, the task of artists should be, in my opinion (and you are an artist), to show the world that what deserves to be considered “real” is our inner world. The phisical world, the external world, is just a crumb: its phisical vastness is nothing compared to the depth of our inner life. Actually, what gives depth to the phisical universe is our human perception. We see depth in the universe, because we have depth inside us. So, the real deep universe is the one inside us. Our inner universe is what makes everything real, worth consideration. Our inner universe makes possible the existence of the external universe.
When I die, the external universe ceases to exist, while instead all the emotions that I spreaded in life will keep their mark in the emotions of other people.
Seeing that, when other people die, the universe is still there should not make us conclude that the remaining universe is the phisical one. Instead, we should realize that, when somebody dies, the external universe has lost a big chance of being something to somebody, the external universe has become less meaningful, because now there are fewer people able to give meaning to the universe.
The universe is just an instrument to let our depth to show itself, otherwise it is nothing.

That would be a total impossibility. For the simple reason that the second universe would be part and parcel of the real universe. — Ken Edwards

Then for what reason do you call it a second universe. If it's just a part of the real universe, without anything separating it from the real universe, then the designation of "second universe" is not justified. It's a part of the one.


I can more easily agree with the position you present. The issue I see is that there is a multitude of "universes", each being the presence of one person's own inner world. And since "multitude" implies a number of distinct individuals, there must be something which separates us all. This would be the external world. (I'll use "world" so that it's not confused with the "universes" which are internal). But this external world which separates us must be just as real as the internal universes, or else there'd be no separation between us, and no multitude of universes.

I call this external world the medium. I think it's better to use the singular "medium" rather than the plural "media", because it is essentially one, and this one thing separates all the individual minds which are many. The medium though, as matter, seems to consist of numerous different forms, and this is what gives the illusion that it is a multitude.

What the external physical world lacks in depth makes it up for in vastness. What the internal mental world lacks in vastness makes it up for in depth.

↪Janus
You got the question wrong, Janus. The right question is __ Which is best? Lick or get licked? — Ken Edwards

Would I rather lick an arse or have my arse licked? Neither sound at all appealing, unless it were a beautiful, clean young woman, but, otherwise, if I had to choose, I would definitely go with the latter.

I think your thoughts are metaphysic, which is, they try to work out how thing are. I want to work on how things are perceived by us. Nothing to do with phenomenology; it is, rather, an emotional, spiritual interest.

I agree with all that you say because I must.

Your inner world is omnipotent because it is all that you have but I am troubled, sometimes, with how far you take it and that your efforts to control it or improve it contain strong emotional elements.

Basically we have a very fundamental problem which is that our world, our inner world, is attempting to observe and think about and talk about ITSELF and even morally judge and change itself for the better.
But it has no tools to do such with. It has only itself with which to pursue that investigation.

Absurd!

Itself judges itself. The psychiatrist is trying to cure the psychiatrist and the patient is trying to cure the patient. We desperately need objectivity but can have no objectivity because objectivity comes from the outside and we have no outside.

Thus our inner worlds can believe and say or deny whatever nonsense that they like with no disapproval except from us in other, similar, inner worlds.

The world's scientists once had similar problems but, perhaps a hundred years ago, they solved those problems and today, science not philosophy rules the roost.

But we have one important advantage. We are bright. We are incredibly smart and our thinking can sometimes do the unthinkable.

For instance I am trying to look at what "objectify" is and to try to imitate it. I and others, have even partially succeeded. Witness the present words.

But I need help lots of help.



Sage comments, Hillary.

You seem to be "Comparing" the two worlds, one with another. Is that possible?

Soppose I say: " Let's compare a corkscrew with a pickup truck."

Then you would answer: " Impossible! There are no common grounds with which to compare."

So?

I want, as you suggest, to simulate something and apply that simulation to myself and, perhaps to you.

I want to simulate Logic and Reason, and Objectivity, verbal of course, and apply them to me and to thee.

Itself judges itself. The psychiatrist is trying to cure the psychiatrist and the patient is trying to cure the patient. We desperately need objectivity but can have no objectivity because objectivity comes from the outside and we have no outside. — Ken Edwards

At least you have understood this! It seems to me that a lot of philosophers and deep thinkers have not realized this at all.

Thus our inner worlds can believe and say or deny whatever nonsense that they like with no disapproval except from us in other, similar, inner worlds. — Ken Edwards

I think it depends on us: if we consider that disapproval, disagreement, instead of being a threat is a resource, a stimulation for progress, further research, then we will look for it like a treasure. It is hard, obviously, our nature drives us to dominate, but we can try to do something. So, I think we have at our disposal several sources to appreciate disapproval: other people, experiences, books, reflection, and even ourselves. We just need to cultivate an attitude of listening and appreciation for disagreement.

The world's scientists once had similar problems but, perhaps a hundred years ago, they solved those problems and today, science not philosophy rules the roost. — Ken Edwards

I agree about this as well: it seems to me that today a lot of philosophers, instead of doing philosophy, they use their rationality in a way that is just an attempt to change philosophy into science. The reason is clear: such a way of doing philosophy gives us a perception of power and control.

For instance I am trying to look at what "objectify" is and to try to imitate it. I and others, have even partially succeeded. — Ken Edwards

I disagree about this. In my view objectivity is evil, because everyday and every moment it forces us to think according to certain necessary criterions: objectivity forces me to think that I cannot fly, I cannot go through a wall, I cannot do this and that, because otherwise I would just put at risk mine and others’ life. Since we cannot ignore objectivity, we cannot get rid of it, we can try to build some kind of good relationship with it. But wanting to imitate it seems excessive to me: why should I imitate evil? I prefer to use it as a possible instrument, a vehicle able to carry something good.

You seem to be "Comparing" the two worlds, one with another. Is that possible? — Ken Edwards

I agree: according to what I said about objectivity as evil, subjectivity and objectivity are enemies. But, as I said, since we are forced to live together with it, I think we can develop an extraordinary ability that we have as humans: you said

We are bright. We are incredibly smart and our thinking can sometimes do the unthinkable. — Ken Edwards

I think our great ability is to change, at least to some extent, evil into good, lack into resources. Aren’t artists those who transform a defect of a piece of marble, a bad shape of a piece of wood, into an inspiration for an amazing artwork? Aren’t great musicians those who transform noises and dissonances into new styles of music?

This means that the serious problem that you expressed, about which I agree

Itself judges itself. The psychiatrist is trying to cure the psychiatrist and the patient is trying to cure the patient. We desperately need objectivity but can have no objectivity because objectivity comes from the outside and we have no outside. — Ken Edwards

is to be faced not by trying to find, obstinately, some kind of strong objectivity, some undefeatable stable reality, but by using it as a real resource. The artist, in trying to depict a tree, is defeated by the perfection of photography. How does the artist answer to this defeat? He changes his problematic point into a resource: he renounces to the aim of painting a tree as similar as possible to the real tree, he abandons totally this purpose and rather he follows the opposite way; this way a total new universe is opened: he discovers that, rather than showing other people the draw of a tree, he can show other people his soul, his heart, just by painting the tree not as similar as possible to reality, but as connected as possible to his emotions, his heart.

I think we need to do the same in philosophy: rather than looking for objectivity, we should use the weakness, the contradictions and paradoxes of our thoughts as positive resources to open completely new universes of philosophy, that are just waiting for us to explore them.

I want, as you suggest, to simulate something and apply that simulation to myself and, perhaps to you.

I want to simulate Logic and Reason, and Objectivity, verbal of course, and apply them to me and to thee. — Ken Edwards

I'm not sure, dear brother Ken, if you can simulate logic and reason. They are part of our constant inner simulation of the big great object world we walk through and look against. Walking through the forrest, it's continuously projected into my inner universe, continuously simulated and given shape, in form, color, sound, and smells, while I'm on the outlook for pretty dead tree chunks, prefabricated by nature in endless varieties of forms. The other day, while playing with the dog, I discovered a lovely piece. But a bit heavy. A fat thick tree bottom piece, shaped by life, death, rain, wind and time. We can potentially simulate the whole universe (I once did a calculation how many different patterns can run on the neural network: a 1 followed by 10exp20 zeroes! Compare with the number of particles in the observable universe, which is a 1 followed by a meager 91 zeroes...).

So instead of simulating logic and reason, use them in your walk, in your quest for shape, color, and beauty.

Creative greetings from a living walking body between the inner and outer universe.

Yours truly, Il guercio

Thanks!

Well, actually I have used logic and reason my whole life in everything I do because I was taught to. And I still do.

I also use Intuition very intensively much more so than most people do, being an artist.

You also seem to be comfortable with the use of intuition.

It is probable that the words "My innerUniverse" are only words and refer to nothing "real". In any case I don't really much care one way or the other.

And creative greetings to you, dear brother from a living body. But not so much a walking one. I am 97 and don't walk too good.
Much love, Ken Edwards

Basically you say that we should do our best to see that good persists and to activelly and energatically promote and teach healthy living. Healthy for everyone.

Janus! Be careful how yo talk. My inner world is very young and innocent and is shocked by some of the things you say.

But that will soon change. We are going to read Kinsey and it's anybodies guess where that may lead to. Yummy!

I know: human sexuality...shocking isn't it? Until it isn't...