‘you’, again, claim to know “your” own ‘Self’ (with capital ‘S’), yet ‘you’ still cannot see the literal self-contradiction here, even though ‘I’ have informed ‘you’ about it many times already.
Now, and again, if ‘you’ really want to come here and claim to have already figured out “your own Self” then who and/or what is that ‘Self’, exactly?
- To me, there is NO ‘problem’ here.
- What are ‘your issues’ that you have not settled yet?
- What do you perceive to be ‘the problem’ here, exactly?
I know I am an evolved biological being.
Product of time and this Earth’s processes, kin to all other living creatures.
I see my “Self” as the dynamic passionate body I possess, along with my accumulated life’s experiences, along with the ceaseless dialogue I have with myself. And it matters to appreciate, senses + body + brain + interactions (interior & exterior) are what produces that chattering dialogue.
I started out about as insecure and naive as can be, but had a thirst for learning about a world full of mysteries to me. From physical stuff outside, like why landscapes changed (geology), where did we come from (biology), and my insides those my urges, why do I follow the same patterns, why do I think as I do, and so on.
After high school, I took off on the adventurer’s journey to self discovery, by going out into the world and facing it with what I had, me and my work ethic (which led to jobs and skills that kept on growing), (since I had no financial safety net, coming from poor stock, where we kids were taught early on, we’d have to fend for ourselves when we cut the apron strings at 18. So I had that going for me.)
Weirdly for someone with all the insecurities that were driven into me via school and such, deep inside there was a deep streak of faith in myself against a world I simply did not understand.
Along with a thirst for learning that was way stronger than my insecurity and protecting my ego. So I lived and learned.
Over the decades attained a respectable mastery of some real skills, culinary arts, while I was young and it was fun. Then transitioning more and more into the building trades, becoming a framing carpenter and good hand at other trades, plumbing, painting, handyman for the long haul of raising family (full time work plus moonlighting).
Along the way I learned to dissect myself and came to realize the little hot head inside of me, the bad me, was inextricably linked with my good me, being able to protect myself when it was needed most. Having it in me to face off with a serious threat from a position of strength, and being able to surprise when push came to shove.
Learning to better understand that my insides are a delicate balancing act with the outside and so on. What will you be present to? It matters. Beyond that this old man’s satisfaction in “knowing himself” is also inextricably bound up with my life’s experiences regarding women and children.
It’s nice to reach old age unplagued by memories of all I missed. I don’t have to live vicariously through movies or sports like so many others that I know.
So perhaps it’s as much to do with being at peace with oneself, as it is about “knowing” oneself.
Can you only express it in a riddle?
What contradiction? Perhaps it’s sandcastles?
That is, that I’m supposed to not be able to know my Self?
That “you” “your” “self” or “Self” can all be parsed out and debated for hours without anything changing?
Well for starters why do we make it so difficult?
What is wrong with the “theory of consciousness” being as straightforward as Dr Solm’s framing - ‘… as the inside reflection of your body communicating with itself as it is dealing with life’?
Then working out from there.
The problem is the assumption that awareness cannot have been the evolved product of biological processes interacting with the world.
‘This’ is your own personal very limited and closed view and perspective of things here. Yet ‘it’ does NOT answer the question, ‘Who am ‘I’?’
‘you’ also still cannot see the literal ‘self-contradiction’ here
LOL So, ‘I’ am ‘the thing’ that ‘I’ possess.
Are ‘you’ not at all curious about the literal ‘self-contradiction’ at all here?
‘Appreciating’ is one thing; ‘understanding’ is a completely different thing.
Can I only express ‘what’ in a riddle?
Can you write your question/s more succinctly and less ambiguously?
What the latter two questions are in relation to I have no idea, but to answer your first question is the word “myself”. Once more, the word ‘my’ implies ownership, so the word “myself” refers to one who owns another. So, which one is ‘the one’ that ‘you’ have, supposedly, come to know, exactly?
Only if one is inclined to debate. I am not.
Why do I make ‘what’, supposedly, so difficult for you?
Where else would the communicating with “itself” happen and occur other than as the ‘inside reflection’?
Also, what is wrong with ALL ‘theories’ is that they are ALL essentially ‘just guesses’ about ‘what could be’ only.
Okay.
Communication.
The acceptance of existing within our physical body as an evolved biological being. Kin to all other evolved living being upon this amazing planet because we were created out of the same process using the same parts - though humans do have the most complex body/brain and environmental dynamics producing an amazing level of introspection unlike anything else.
I am about my connects to myself and the world around me.
What you think you are or what you think I am I have no clue, because you choose to keep it all within your apparently superior mental bubble.
I already admitted we do not speak the same language, and that I’m about trying to extract some interesting relevant dialogue, but all I get from you is your sense of superiority. You win I am not worthy.
Since you already admitted that you do not speak the same language, is that not the answer to your question?
There ought to be more to philosophy than the gratuitous linguistic grandstanding you’ve limited our discussion to.
Are you informing me that philosophy isn’t there to help people struggle with and work through a better understanding of our age old existential questions and fears?
Or that philosophy is only for the geniuses who can spend their lives in libraries and studies, looking down on the rest of the inferior mass of humanity?
Who are you?
There is a lot of questioning happening here.
Before questions arise, what is necessarily true? Before the biology, before the memories, before the body, what makes all those questions possible?
Thoughts are revealing that something must be valuing, must be there to be diminished; something must exist to fear, something must be present and aware enough to ask.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Could it be awareness?
As the song says, 'you gotta know when to fold ‘em’. It’s pretty obvious from the circularity of your discussion with ‘ages’ that he/she is basically trolling most of the time.
Nailed it. From Deadwood : " fear is every man’s portion."
The questing questioning needs to catch itself in the act. The “catch” needs to “conch” its own tale. The clot needs to clutch its own trail.
Existence is a worry wart. Existence is a hurry sport. Being is (the presence-ing of ) ontology. Being is (the de-concealment of ) a viscerally specified questing self-questioning.
“Forth worry in the morning.”
For me, it’s Tuunbaq approaching (from “The Terror”).
The bliss of astonishment only comes to those who do not retreat in everyday comfortable mess.
Who sit with the terror long enough to be torn into wakefulness.
Tuunbaq will visit again when called upon.
‘Philosophy’ is not within all human beings to help people struggle with absolutely anything.
‘Philosophy’ has already helped some to obtain and gain a full understanding of what used to be so-called “age old” 'existential questions and fears.
Out of the countless other possibilities, are these two options really the only options you are providing me with here?
‘you’ are the invisible thoughts and emotions within a visible human body.
Indeed, and the act of questioning tells us even more about this something than that it is simply aware. A question implies two dimensions. First, inquiry always takes its direction from a point of view and a context of understanding that projects itself forward through the terms of the question. Second, a question implies the possibility that it could be invalidated. So the being which asks questions is anticipative.
‘That’, which everyone could agree with and accept.
Inquisitiveness and the ability to learn, understand, and reason about absolutely any and every thing. These things exist in some specific biological forms only, like, for example, humans.
‘Awareness’ is, literally, behind everything.
‘Awareness’, by the way, is the ‘I’, which actually is the One that knows the answers to the questions that arise within the human animal.
Is ‘this’ really what is “pretty obvious” to you?
Only some people fear and worry, and human beings used to not worry.
I use “worry” in the more general sense of “care.” An animal “cares” about its offspring for instance. It “enacts” this care. We understand its movements in terms of long-term goals.
In the human philosophical context, humans enact their care for “having a good verbal grip” on their basic situation. So questioning is “driven” by this “caring about understanding.”
To say that “being is the presense of ontology” is to suggest that our questioning is not “outside of” the topic of inquiry. The basic human situation is visceral inquiry itself. Who am I ? I am an incarnate problem-solving questioning. I “am” ontology. This “am” should be felt as a radiant verb.
I am “am-ing” ontology.
Ontology am.
The question might begin as: what is time ?
Then it proceeds perhaps to : who is time ? In other words, who am I trying to be and who should I try to be ?
Quest(ion)ing is future-directed creativity.
What is time and who and what I am, exactly, are already known.
Hmmm, seems this thread has devolved into self-indulgent poetry.
I think “self-asserting and self-synthesizing (generalized) poetry” is a decent description of what all of us are doing here.
IMO, people tend to be “act-blind” to the their own performance-for-others of their evolving sense of intellectual virtue.
I chalk up what I’d call the dominant “physics mysticism” in foolosophy to a “flight from the squishy.” The assumption is enacted that “dry mathoplastics” are somehow “deeper” and “more real” than the discourses that address our coexistence at a higher level that acknowledges of our life in signs.