Omni connexae!
30th September 2011, 23:06
Hello, please listen...
It is true that we experience that there are “things” external to us, for we perceive a background separating them from us and from each other. This may be a landscape or the walls of a room.
In such case, it is proper to say that the background is grounded, for it is attached to the earth. However, we can also experience separate birds when they fly, even though the earth and nothing attached to it is in view.
We experience their flight against the clouds and against each other. If there were only one bird in the sky, no clouds and no land in view, we could see the flapping of a bird’s wings but could not experience its movement through the sky.
Yet, even if we had never seen a bird before, we would know that it was a separate thing. We would know this, simply because a bird always has a recognizable character and not because we intuit a space through which it flies or even because it “emerges” from a background.
Empty space has no character and is nothing to the senses. A background with no character is, to us, no background at all.
Our experience of separate things cannot be purely a matter of spatial or temporal segregation. The “now” and “not-now,” like the “here” and “not-here,” are inextricably conjoined in reality.
They are only separate in the mind. The statement—“a thing cannot exist unless it exists at a certain time and place”—seems fine on its face. However, the expression, “a certain time and place” implies that the “time and place” we are talking about are unique, in the sense that they include no other time and place.
This means that “here” must be a point and “now” must be an instant. From this it follows that the extent of “here” is naught, and the duration of “now” is naught. Thus, the originally quoted axiom runs afoul of this one: “a thing that has no spatial extent and exists for no time at all does not exist.”
Further, the division of time into instants and space into points denies the reality of motion as a matter of logic; for nothing can move in increments of naught. This is the crux of Zeno’s paradox. As Bergson put it, such a view of motion “implies the absurd proposition that movement is made of immobilities.”
Reality does not consist of separate spatio-temporal existents (“beings”).
Rather, reality is all that happens.
What we recognize as a separate thing is not a “gestalt” in the sense that its identity is due to the fact that, as a “whole,” it contains qualities not found in the “parts”; for “whole” and “parts” are never fully determinable in terms of separate times and locations. Everything in the world is interrelated and interconnected.
Ultimately, separateness is a judgment and not something independent of the mind.
Nothing real is unchanging, and “being” is no more than recognition. The recognition process is able to identify that which is external to us, whether or not the sensory experience reveals “things as they really are”; for there is every reason to believe that what is similar, whenever encountered, will excite a similar sensory experience...
In this way, we are able to learn that “things are what they are and not something else.”
This inevitably occurs in the context of a thing doing us good or ill, for our memories tend to focus on “what matters.” It is not necessary to know what an experience “really is.” It is only necessary to recognize that things as experienced can have an effect on our wellbeing.
In fact, the expressions, “the thing as it really is” or “the being of beings” is really quite meaningless; for a thing has many aspects and is always subject to change.
The “essence of things” or “the being of beings” is a kind of illusion owing to our inability to perceive very gradual changes. Nothing really “is.” Everything “happens.”
Perceiving a thing cannot entail knowing all that may be predicated of it at any instant, for this is not only beyond our sensory powers but is also quite impossible to achieve.
It is true that we experience that there are “things” external to us, for we perceive a background separating them from us and from each other. This may be a landscape or the walls of a room.
In such case, it is proper to say that the background is grounded, for it is attached to the earth. However, we can also experience separate birds when they fly, even though the earth and nothing attached to it is in view.
We experience their flight against the clouds and against each other. If there were only one bird in the sky, no clouds and no land in view, we could see the flapping of a bird’s wings but could not experience its movement through the sky.
Yet, even if we had never seen a bird before, we would know that it was a separate thing. We would know this, simply because a bird always has a recognizable character and not because we intuit a space through which it flies or even because it “emerges” from a background.
Empty space has no character and is nothing to the senses. A background with no character is, to us, no background at all.
Our experience of separate things cannot be purely a matter of spatial or temporal segregation. The “now” and “not-now,” like the “here” and “not-here,” are inextricably conjoined in reality.
They are only separate in the mind. The statement—“a thing cannot exist unless it exists at a certain time and place”—seems fine on its face. However, the expression, “a certain time and place” implies that the “time and place” we are talking about are unique, in the sense that they include no other time and place.
This means that “here” must be a point and “now” must be an instant. From this it follows that the extent of “here” is naught, and the duration of “now” is naught. Thus, the originally quoted axiom runs afoul of this one: “a thing that has no spatial extent and exists for no time at all does not exist.”
Further, the division of time into instants and space into points denies the reality of motion as a matter of logic; for nothing can move in increments of naught. This is the crux of Zeno’s paradox. As Bergson put it, such a view of motion “implies the absurd proposition that movement is made of immobilities.”
Reality does not consist of separate spatio-temporal existents (“beings”).
Rather, reality is all that happens.
What we recognize as a separate thing is not a “gestalt” in the sense that its identity is due to the fact that, as a “whole,” it contains qualities not found in the “parts”; for “whole” and “parts” are never fully determinable in terms of separate times and locations. Everything in the world is interrelated and interconnected.
Ultimately, separateness is a judgment and not something independent of the mind.
Nothing real is unchanging, and “being” is no more than recognition. The recognition process is able to identify that which is external to us, whether or not the sensory experience reveals “things as they really are”; for there is every reason to believe that what is similar, whenever encountered, will excite a similar sensory experience...
In this way, we are able to learn that “things are what they are and not something else.”
This inevitably occurs in the context of a thing doing us good or ill, for our memories tend to focus on “what matters.” It is not necessary to know what an experience “really is.” It is only necessary to recognize that things as experienced can have an effect on our wellbeing.
In fact, the expressions, “the thing as it really is” or “the being of beings” is really quite meaningless; for a thing has many aspects and is always subject to change.
The “essence of things” or “the being of beings” is a kind of illusion owing to our inability to perceive very gradual changes. Nothing really “is.” Everything “happens.”
Perceiving a thing cannot entail knowing all that may be predicated of it at any instant, for this is not only beyond our sensory powers but is also quite impossible to achieve.