GENIUS FORUMS

dejavu wrote:So what is it then?

I believe I described it clearly enough.

The distinction is redundant. Whether in conceiving ones own self or a higher and indeed highest self, one nevertheless conceives self.

One either conceives of self or one does not, and there is only one true self.

dejavu wrote: We're really everything are we? How did you come to this conclusion? Ego is self-conception, and nothing but. There is no individuality without it. You are deluded.

I originally read this as:

Ego is self-deception, and nothing but.

... which seems equally valid.

dejavu writes: Deception is a form of conception, not vice versa. No matter how the ego operates, one still arrives at oneself.

perfect wisdom . . . .

It has always been a type of ego to which the sagely hereabouts protest---their own type excluded.

dejavu wrote:How can one not conceive of self?

By not being fully conscious.

Also, you have not yet said how you came to conclude that we are everything.

Nothing has inherent existence.

You have described, to some extent, what it is not, that is for certain.

Love always requires an ideal that is separate from oneself, and it involves striving towards that ideal. This striving can either be emotional and unconscious(ordinary people) or conscious(striving of a person who is not fully enlightened.) When wise people talk of love, they mean the latter kind. Also, The latter kind of love ultimately leads to the seeker and the ideal becoming one and the same, so ceases to be love. You can find an analogy of it in ordinary love. Suppose you love a woman very much, and one day you find you have become that woman(by whatever means). Whom would you love now?

dejavu wrote:Let's drop love for the moment and concentrate on inherent existence. It's something that seems to set me apart from everyone on this board.

Yeah dejavu, could you start a new thread on this and explain what you mean?

dejavu wrote:No, everything has inherent existence.

Whatever inherent existence that "everything" had when you wrote that it did had changed the moment after you wrote it.

dejavu wrote:So what? It didn't become any less inherent for doing so. But then you think nothing has inherent existence, so what are you getting at?

If a thing has inherent existence, then it cannot change, and therefore cannot exist in time, because at the very least a thing's position in time changes. But that is logically impossible. Everything has to exist within time - within cause and effect.

I suspect this discussion could be enhanced if you were to state what you mean by "inherent".

dejavu wrote:No, a things inherency does not in any way preclude it from change or even ceasing to be.

If it can change or cease to be, then what how can anything be "inherent" to it?

How could everything, ie. infinity, exist within time?!

So by everything you meant the infinite? In that case, the infinite can't have inherent existence, because it cannot exist in the first place.

dejavu wrote:I disagree.

You have to provide a reason for disagreeing. Only a finite object can exist, as to exist it must have something else to contrast itself with. On the other hand, there is nothing apart from the infinite, which can give it existence.

dejavu wrote:I mean what is commonly meant by the word. Any old dictionary definition should do.

What is commonly meant by "inherent existence" is that an object exists "from its side."

For instance, a chair is inherently a chair, meaning that there are qualities in the object itself (inherent in it)that make it a chair, rather than being a matter of interpretation, or a matter of the relationship between that object and some other objects or subjects.

Under this view, a chair is a chair, regardless of whether there is anyone to call it a chair or whether anyone ever sits in it.

Do you agree with that definiition?


The converse view that the group of objects referred to as "chairs" is arbitrary and defined by whether people place them in that group, and they are put in that group based on their use (or potential use) to some group as a place to sit (and other characteristics) - and so the group is defined relationally, not because of an inherent property of the object itself.

Language being a complicated affair, we could go further and look at how particular objects might be classified as a divan, a sofa, a loveseat, a hammock, a stool, a toy chair in a doll house, or just a rock or a log suitable for sitting on, and whether those objects fall into the category "chair." Is that classification based on inherent properties of those objects? Might different people classify them differently? Might it work differently in different languages or cultures?

dejavu wrote:

You have to provide a reason for disagreeing. Only a finite object can exist, as to exist it must have something else to contrast itself with. On the other hand, there is nothing apart from the infinite, which can give it existence.

The infinite gives the finite existence, and yet the infinite doesn't exist?!

It is precisely *because* that it gives the finite existence, that the infinite cannot exist.

The non-inherency thing - as it has been sported about in the house dressing - has as its direct goal the notion of No Self. It's a very old Buddhist thing meant to destroy ego: you have no inherent existence, so there is no need for one to get wrapped up in a sense of self, an ego. Instead, one is the product of an endless web of causes and effects and has no self-standing, self-sustaining essence of one's own. For Buddhist thinkers (at least of a certain stripe) this is to bring immense relief from the rigors of being a subject. Worry not about the world you personally live and suffer - it has no inherent existence of its own. And to stretch that to its limit - it isn't real.

And right here is the crux of two items of belief among the ingredients of the house dressing: 1. things don't exist inherently (including you), 2. so your ego is also an error.

I think dejavu has the next thought on both of these. The next thought, the higher thought.
1. The universe exists inherently, so then would all-things included within it.
2. Ego is one's sense of self, and that will never go away i.e. it's inherent in us. It may shape-shift, perhaps, but never be gone.

Hence, that self-same inherent ego (sense of self) is proof of each individual's inherent existence.

Well, Pye, you are absolutely right that this line of thought eventually goes on to consider the ego, and this is an extremely important part of Buddhism.

But I think there is a strong tendancy to get jump right to that stuff - which can have a strong emotional component. Instead, I prefer to think about common, everyday objects like chairs. If we don't understand what it means for a chair to exist, (or, more properly, what it means to say that a chair exists, ) then it's only going to be that much more difficult when we consider more emotionally loaded topics.

And this leads directly into the nature of language, when we start looking at exactly what "is" means (no Clinton jokes).


There are two ways to see the statement "that object is a chair."

The first view - going back to the ancient Greeks - is that there is some sort of (Platonic) ideal that exists "out there" somewhere in a non-physical form, and a chair is an instantiation of that ideal - having all the essential characteristics that constitute chair-ness (e.g. you can sit on it), and also having various accidental characteristics (e.g., it is blue).

Because the object has those essential characteristics, it is inherently a chair. Chair-ness is its essence.


A second view, put forth by Wittgenstein (and many others, of course) is that "chair" is a word that refers to some group of physical objects. We decide, when presented with a particular object, if it is similar enough to other objects referred to by that term to also be referred to by that term. And this, I think, corresponds to how language is actually learned as a child. The child learns by imitating parents and others, learning which objects are referred to by which terms. Eventually she learns this particular thing is a chair, and that thing is an ottoman or a sofa or a table. And all language is developed this way, by developing a consensus as th what particular terms refer to, by referring to particular examples.

The first (Platonic) view is called Essentialism, and the second view is Existentialism. Essentialism sees the categories as existing first - and in some sense more real than the particular objects. The second view sees the objects as existing, and essence as being a creation, a category of thought, not something that exists "out there" independantly. (This is sometimes stated as "Existence precedes essence.")


I think it's pretty clear that these two views are incompatible. My own view is that Essentialism is the obvious, "natural" way to think about things - but is incorrect. It is the naive view, but is not compatible with an understanding of how language actually arises, and how the meaning of words shift and change over time.

Good post, Dave. Language indeed.

Here's the thing: There is no need for the meaning of inherent to dissolve into a metaphysical issue, implying intentionality and all that. There is an existential reading of the situation, and it's based on understanding the dual nature of consciousness. Perceiver and thing-perceived. They rise together in a concrete world. They self-stand (putting aside the quantum kinds of problems defining particle-things) or what is consciousness-of? This is as proper a way to choose inherent to describe their/our condition as any, in a totality we can only describe as inherent, unless we want to posit god/forms/or something various or vaguely envisioned called pre-existence. An existential reading would find pre-existence an offensive oxymoron, violating at the very least your basic a=a.

So, too, does the word essence too rapidly skate a pathology over to your aforementioned essentialism (which, by the way I don't find the least bit comfortable to think :)) Essence, I estimate, can only ever mean its qualities (or properties), and these, too have to be things before we are wrapping words around them, i.e. becoming conscious of them.

In short, there is only existence, so we can only be grounding our definitions there.

Never forego the subconscious; as within it lives the ether of form to the once formless (DNA maps and scripts). Essence is simply the mind's eye way of transmutating subconscious data to the verbosity semantic. The hearth of love is this very dicohtemy manifest in a glass onion form. Hence, all is one, all is love.

dejavu wrote:That is a non-sequitur

No it's not. No finite thing can ultimately give rise to any other finite thing.

How does one logically infer infinity?

It does not need to be inferred. It is self evident, by definition.

Pye wrote:1. The universe exists inherently, so then would all-things included within it.

This is what happens when inherent existence is misunderstood. The universe, if defined as the Totality, cannot exist in the first place.

2. Ego is one's sense of self, and that will never go away i.e. it's inherent in us. It may shape-shift, perhaps, but never be gone.

There can't be a sense of self, for the same reason that an eye cannot see itself.

A finite hologram space could give rise to another larger section - "it's just his now, as in whoa."

science with art.

random:

reason for the internet: random non-inherency.

dejavu wrote:

jupiviv wrote:No it's not. No finite thing can ultimately give rise to any other finite thing.

You'd better explain what you mean by this, because it makes no sense to me.

Where do you ultimately come from? If you answer - "energy", then where does energy ultimately come from? And so one and so forth. No finite thing can be the "ultimate cause" for something, because to be that it would have to be the "first cause" - which is a logical impossibility.

Self-evident, and yet non-existent?!

It is self evident precisely because it is non-existent.

So the universe doesn't exist?

Not if it is defined as the Totality, or God.

There can be no sense of self?

This depends on the definition of "self". If self is defined as the soul, which is ultimately the Infinite, then there can be no sense of it. However, there can be knowledge of what it is.

dejavu wrote:Well I'm glad you've cleared that up for yourself, but back to what you wrote-- "No finite thing can ultimately give rise to any other finite thing", you can see why I pushed the point...or can't you?

No finite thing can be a first cause, or exist inherently, and that is why it cannot be the sole cause of anything.

jupiviv wrote: It is self evident precisely because it is non-existent.

Again, that makes no sense.

If it existed, it would require other things as evidence of itself.

In reality, no matter how we define it, whatever we call it, it exists.

You have to give reasons for what you say, otherwise this discussion is fruitless.

I can say - "In reality, no matter how we define it, whatever we call it, it does not exist." - but saying this without giving reasons would be meaningless.

Knowledge of something you hold to be non-existent? Why are we still having this conversation?

Logic does not "exist", yet we can know logic.

P.S: Your definitions of things like "exist" and "infinite" seem to be extremely vague. You have to say precisely what you mean by the things you are saying before you can have a proper discussion.

dejavu wrote:No, while no finite thing can be a 'first cause' it still exists inherently.

It cannot, for reasons I've already provided.

Rubbish, infinity is all things.

So how can you say that it exists? What else is there that could give it existence?

That we are discussing this at all presupposes our existence.

But not that of the infinite.

No, logic does exist. We know it by what it is.

Logic is how things appear to us. It does not exist.

The Infinite does not exist entirely within time, as time is part of the Infinite. Time exists within the Infinite. Therefore, the Infinite transcends any problem of inherent existence, which is limited by cause and effect.

The mundane view of "inherent" is as David Hodges explained with the chair example, but if we substitute the chair for existence itself, that is where causality becomes a factor.

dejavu wrote: Elizabeth, would you then agree with this sentence: "Everything exists inherently." ?

Everyone who has so far commented on this--, do you or do you not? I have no interest in hearing "Well it depends on what is mean by inherent..etc etc." What do you yourselves mean by it? :D

I'd be happy to skip the Clintonating, but the way that sentence is structured, I have to answer twice depending on what you mean by "Everything."


If by "Everything" you mean "everything" - meaning "all things" or "every thing" - then I would say no. In fact, it is almost the opposite. I mean that nothing exists inherently except the Totality itself.

If by "Everything" you mean "Everything" or the Totality, then I would agree.

dejavu wrote:You have not. All of your 'reasons' for your claims to the non-existence of the universe are errors of reasoning.

You have yet to provide a reason for saying this.

Itself. It is, after all, infinite.

So apart from the infinite, there is that same infinite that gives it existence? This is a logical contradiction.

While it does not presuppose that our own existence is infinite, it presupposes existence itself, which is.

It presupposes existence, but not inherent existence. I may not exist at all, and all you are seeing on the screen may have been pre-recorded. I have only as much existence as you give me, and nothing beyond or in spite of that.

jupiviv wrote:Logic is how things appear to us. It does not exist.

Another non-sequitur. You're full of them.

How is that a non-sequitur? If you refuse or fail to follow the logic of an argument, that does not mean it's a non-sequitur. Try thinking about what is said before responding to it.