re:the real

[Guest guest]

Logic isn't logical, because it

>assumes that there could be

>definitions of *is* and

>other things besides *is* which

>*is* could link, like " a cow "

>and " brown " ...

>

>Those assumptions are irrational

>and unfounded, so logic rests

>in irrational assumptions.

 

I take what you're saying here is that are no good grounds for logic, that

it's an airship that never had metaphysical moorings to cast off from. And

that means that all talk about anything, to which logic gives a formal

shape is essentially groundless. The grounds you offer for this

groundlessness is that being cannot be defined. I would say that existence

is a requirement for the defining of something rather than being a thing

that can itself be defined. It's also true that not everything that you

can put into a sentence can be defined in the sense of isolated as an

individual unit of meaning. How did you get 'coloured' from various

experiences of coloured objects. Does 'coloured' exist any more than 'is'?

How have you the concept of brown cow, brown jug, browness, cowhood or

recognising a genus in all the species you encounter. Then there are all

the other concepts which would be difficult to encounter 'but', 'and', 'not

this', 'the other one' etc. There are so many concepts that we use that

are the basis of any possible judgment but could not have been arrived at

by a definition. So where do they come from? Do they exist in the dark

before the light of the senses are switched on? In a Platonic realm?

 

>Once those assumptions are made,

>you can have cause and effect,

>before and after, and can

>pursue logical discourses of

>all types.

 

Are you a Humean being or what? Ordinary human navigation of this soft

machine through a dangerous world recognises at the cellular level that

effect implies cause.

 

Maybe we look at all this in an excessively mentalistic way. Looking for

an answer in our consciousness right now ignores the fact that this present

stage of being in the world is the result of evolution from the awareness

of the bacterium moving from the sour end of a solution to the sweet end.

Everything out there is in here too. We live that out there as in here.

Logic which at its most basic involves stating a proposition and then

saying 'not that' is a latecomer to this scene. It demands that we stand

aside from the flux. Are dreams the vestige of an earlier form of

consciousness in which we cannot do this? So we have to act it out.

 

Sidebar: Maybe old Freud was right you know, dreams are a form of wish

fulfilment, even if horrible. To 'not' something you have to 'present' it.

 

I would go a certain distance with you in that I would accept that

manifest reality does not contain within itself the basis of its reality.

To take it in that way is to live in unreality. However reality is

non-dual with it which is not a cunning way of saying that they are one.

In that way the real is always present which even if I was realized, which

I'm not, I could say nothing about. A point of agreement there so a good

place to sign off,

Best Wishes, Michael

 

 

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Hello Dan,

I hope I've got the gist of what you're saying. It seems to me that

you're moving between the metaphysical level of being/existence in an

absolute sense and this mundane reality. At this level we use the word

'real' in many different ways - real cream, real butter, real democracy.

You can trace the main usages yourself. A certain criterion of this or

that exists and is applied. Anyway there is a sense of testing. The use

you offer of real has no reference to anything. It is like the smile of

the Chesire Cat. Similarly 'existence' is of no particular existent but

qua existence itself and not anything in particualar which exists. Which

is fine but the problem arises when you mix up existence as such and a

particular existent and treat them as though they were on the same level.

e.g. the cat is on the mat. Because some of the elements in that sentence

are capable of being defined by pointing should 'is' be too? Not of course

by pointing but in some mysterious undefined way, preverbally.

 

I would maintain that there is a pre-reflective cogito which is the sense

of self-existence but as you do not believe in the self then that preverbal

awareness you would not I think accept. Perhaps I have misconstrued your

position completely,

Best Wishes, Michael

 

 

 

 

 

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