Reply to the response to Entry 523

“Generally felt awareness, notions, actions and reactions arise out of subject-object duality and adherence to individual identity. On the other hand, merging with the unknown is an ever-fresh dynamic state where individuality is lost and space between subject and object vanishes thus reducing the notion of space to zero and consequently further movements or events therein. I.e., time also to zero. Thus simply put, such a digital transformation means either one's awareness is moving in subject-object dual mode or in totality alone. There is no question of one in the former analog state to know the latter while, one in the digitally transformed state submerged in the total movement may at will, descend to the analog state at times and speak or indicate some aspects of the dynamic state and yet, this does not mean that everything could ever be described- not at all. Consequently, comparisons and evaluations or judgmental approach can never lead anyone anywhere near the dynamic state but one who has been in the dynamic state may choose to come down to the mundane level at times willfully.”

Additional explanation:

“Since the entry form became inaccessible I send this e-mail to clarify further as given below: -
The chatterless state of mind simply is equivalent to being like a needlepoint in a haystack of familiar chatter of various kinds. Hence, in order to be at such a state one may have to think deeply about the entity which witnesses even a state of one’s deep sleep which is all too familiar when we say ‘I slept well indeed!’ It is a state prior to the notion of even 'i' cropping up before any thought or seed of any action or action thereof.
All one has to do is ‘do nothing’ but stop subjective evaluations.
Such a state is exclusive and devoid of all notions and beliefs and evaluations thereof. Hence, it cannot be fathomed by tools of comparison or ideal kept on a pedestal and trying to close the gap in an analog fashion of any kind. If at all the awakening takes place it would happen all of a sudden with no prior inkling which would transform one's whole being with simultaneous infinite perceptions out of which even the mundane events in the domain of the known may well be a part. However, no special personal attachment or preference would prevail. All the same the blissful total movement without subject-object duality as tasted firsthand leaves an unshakeable conviction about it more powerful than one knowing his/her gender without having to verify by any means.
It is like a quantum leap with an inherent ability to switch from analog state to digital state and vice versa at one's will, once the seemingly insurmountable barrier is crossed at least once. What it means that a total unfailing conviction about such a transformation occurs when all mundane things and happenings appear as an insignificant slide show at the backdrop!”

R. Rangan February 6 2005

Response:

It is unclear to us how an individual can [more reasonably] know he or she is “merged” with the unknown (or has “tasted firsthand” the unknown), except by relying on his or her subjective interpretation of experience, because as you say, “individuality is lost” and the “space between the subject and object vanishes” in the unknown. Our point is supported by your claim that the unknown is a state of “totality” or oneness, which clearly suggests that the unknown is outside the bounds of what we can [more reasonably] know. Are you claiming that there is another state of knowing based on totality and no comparison, and is your position merely grounded in subjective interpretation of experience?

If you are claiming another of state of knowing (which entails “simultaneous infinite perceptions”), what more reasonable evidence do you have of such a state of knowing?

If you are relying fundamentally on subjective interpretation of experience (of “merge” with or “taste” of the unknown), then based on your subjective interpretation, and the (more reasonable) comparative, incomplete nature of human consciousness, and our (more reasonable) inability to get outside of human consciousness and know that we are, your claim of totality or oneness, or complete knowledge of who we are is less reasonable. Viz., for you to take your position from mere possibility (or reasonability) to more possibility (or more reasonability), you need to go beyond fundamental reliance on subjective interpretation of experience.

Based on your additional explanation, how does a “quantum leap” and “digital state” allow you or anyone else to more reasonably completely know who we are? Or as asked above, what is this other state of knowing you are referring to, and what grounds do you have other than subjective interpretation of experience that this other state of knowing exists?

525. Entry:

Reply to the response to Entry 524

“Your questions can be answered if anyone could answer as to who or which entity happens to witness even a state of deep sleep which is taken for granted are is assumed to be well known. How could you answer this known fact of life by your proposition of ‘more reasonableness’? Is the ‘I’ as in wakeful state or dreaming state the witnessing element in one's deep sleep or is the witnessing element even prior to the arising of ‘I’ is what we have to ponder? Thus, your proposition itself is only an idea and just because it may not be overcome by known parameters does not prove anything when it comes to dealing with something which is even prior to the notion of ‘I’. This implies that only the reckoning alone remains without the reckoned or the observer and the question of mind which is presumed to be the only faculty of reckoning itself becomes invalid. Any attempt by the so-called mind moves away from what is, similar to multiplying anything by zero making the results to be zero always. Thus daring to throw such notions away at the fundamental level is the prerequisite for the digital awakening to dawn upon one, engaged in this seemingly unsolvable puzzle of life.”

Additional explanation:

“Generally speaking all our actions arise out of our desire to fulfill our desires, deals, belief, dogma etc…while seeking pleasure, security, fame, recognition etc… Thus, prior to any kind of action or notion the feeling ‘I’ precedes always, when we look at it in a fundamental sense. Therefore, subject-object or opposites in any comparative approach both arise simultaneously which get triggered by the very mechanism of such comparison. When we say good it inherently implies and gives rise to the opposite ‘bad’ also. Since the witnessing factor is really a state even prior to the arising of ‘I’ it is certainly not subjective. It is neither subjective nor objective. Such notions are no longer applicable when the digital awakening takes place.”

R. Rangan February 11 2005

Response:

As in other responses to your entries (like Entries 520 and 524), we acknowledge the possibility of your “digital awakening” state. However, as mentioned in the response to Entry 524, your “awakening” state is grounded on the subjective interpretation of experience, and therefore, unless you or anyone else can show otherwise, your “awakening” state falls short of more reasonableness. This point does not mean we are disregarding your conception. No. We are merely evaluating its reasonableness based on what we know now, without knowing what the future may entail.

Moreover, just because there is a possibility for a witnessing factor prior to the rising of “I”, does not invalidate the notion of more reasonableness, because the so-called “arising” is expressed within the conscious realm. If you can more reasonably establish another realm of knowing outside of the conscious realm, or express another realm of knowing without the use of the conscious realm, we would concede the invalidity of the notion of more reasonableness.
So far all you have done is express your “digital awakening” state through the conscious realm, and therefore in our view, you have less reasonably relied on your subjective interpretation of experience (of the “merge with” or “taste of” the unknown).

How can you go beyond subjective interpretation of experience?

How can you get outside of the conscious realm and express another realm of knowing (i.e. “witnessing factor”) which others including us can understand?

526. Entry:

“We are what we know ourselves to be. Thinking and being are not separable. Descartes showed that in his ‘cogito, ergo sum.’ It is merely dualism to assume abstract distinction between the two without understanding their identity. What is Being? Being is a concept - a thought. We have no sensual experience of being; we merely think it. Strip away all sensuous perception from the experience of a thing and we are left merely with its Being - but Being itself is not detectable by the senses. It is only thought. Thought logically starts with Being, so Being is the immediacy of thought. As the ‘start,’ it implies that more is to come, and that ‘more’ is mediation. Thinking is pure mediation, mediate activity, but we can abstract from that activity a logical starting point - only as an abstraction - and that is Being. Being never exists independently of Thought, nor Thought independently of Being. Thought IS Being, because Thought is identical with itself, which is what we mean by Being. It has already been pointed out that Being is Thought. To isolate Thought from Being is therefore merely a one-sided abstraction from their concrete identity.”

Mike Marchetti February 13 2004

Response:

In a limited sense, we agree with you that “Thought logically starts with Being”. Viz., it is logically unclear to us how anyone can have thought without being or existing at some level or in some form. However, we think you take your position too far by asserting that “Being is Thought”; “Thought is Being”, because there are moments in one’s existence, like meditation or periods of sleep, when we do not think, which suggests that being is separate or not exclusive to thought. (If you contend that all we can know is what we think, and Being is Thought and nothing else, then your position illogically amounts to saying that everything (from our perspective) is Thought and nothing else. Is it more reasonable that we exist in a world made up of thoughts and an external world (comprised of life-forms and things), or in a world made up of thoughts and nothing else?!)

More important, your position on Being and Thought lacks an epistemology; so it is unclear to us how you more reasonably completely know “Being is Thought”; “Thought is Being”, except that is what you (logically) think. Just because you (logically) think something, does not necessarily make what you (logically) think more reasonably complete. (Logic and thought themselves do not necessarily entail completion.)

How do you know your position on Being and Thought is more reasonably complete? (If you argue that you know because “Being is Thought”; Thought is Being” (i.e. Thought is whole), then your position among other things succumbs to circularity because you are using thought to explain thought, and succumbs to “recursive reflexivity” (Entry 296).)

527. Entry:

Reply to the response to Entry 526

“It seems to me that you have not addressed or understood the concepts I presented. Since my presentation was rather concise, let us see if we can expand upon it in lieu of your response. I will enumerate the points in order to break down the essential concepts that need to be addressed.

1. I stated, ‘We are what we know ourselves to be.’ This is based on Descartes' considerations, notably, his ‘Cogito, ergo sum.’ Descartes meant by this that our being and thinking are identical. Let us look at this carefully, to make sure we actually understand what he is stating here, because this is something that modern abstract thinking does not grasp at all, and it seems to me that you have adopted this same mode of abstract thinking or duality of thought and being characteristic of uncritical modern thinking.

Descartes, himself says, the fact that we are thinking essences is ‘prima quaedam notio quae ex nullo syllogismo concluditur’ [‘a certain primary concept that is not concluded from any syllogism’], and he continues: ‘neque cum quis dicit: ego cogito, ergo sum sive existo, existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit’ [‘and when someone says 'I am thinking; therefore I am, or I exist,' he does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism’]. Since Descartes knows what belongs to a syllogism, he adds that if with this proposition there had to be a deduction through a syllogism, then the required major premise would be: ‘illud omne, quod cogitat, est sive existit’ [‘everything that thinks is, or exists’]. But, he remarks, this last proposition is one that is only deduced from the first one.

Simply put, the syllogism would have to be:

Whatever thinks, is. ------ (major premise)
I think. ------------------ (minor premise)
Therefore I am.

where the major premise is deduced only from the minor premise and conclusion. The point is that thinking and being are simultaneously uttered. There is no separation between being and thinking. Human being is thinking being. Being is not one thing and thinking something else. Being exists only as thinking, and thinking exists only as being. Another way to look at this: Can you say ‘think’ without I? Is it possible to conceive of thinking without I? Contrariwise, can you say ‘I’ without thinking? Is it possible to conceive of ‘I’ without thinking? I is only as thinking, and it does not exist without thinking. This is what Descartes is expressing.

As for sleep - that is an additional subject matter, another concept we will get to later. Here we want to stick only to the logical content of the concepts so far presented: I, thought and being.

As for reasonableness - reason is not based on common sense, or what ordinary thinking based on experience assumes to be true. Reason must be based on systematic logical thought, not on experience. Experience must ultimately be justified in terms of what is rational, otherwise experience does not itself yield truth. You may see the Sun rise in the East and set in the West, but that experienced movement is all an illusion, since the Sun doesn't move at all according to our rational system of understanding the solar system.

2. What you seem to be claiming is that there is a dualism: being and thought, i.e. two separate substances. In that case, you have a serious problem. How can being ever be thought if being is entirely different from thought? If you are advocating this type of dualism then it is a very naive dualism - naive because you are uncritically assuming what is, in fact, an insoluble problem of dualism.

3. Then let us seriously consider that Being is Thought, without wandering away from this identity by thinking of something else - like sleeping, or what is reasonable in light of experience, etc. Let nothing else enter our consideration. So just consider the validity or invalidity of the identity of being and thought.

Start with Being. What is Being? Being is a concept, i.e. thought. We never experience Being with any of our senses, yet we presume it to be there as the very substance of our sensations or consciousness. So the only way we can refer to Being at all is by presumption, i.e. we posit it as what is objective to thought - as what we think about. Thus Being represents the content of thought.

Is the content of thought different from thought? To claim that thought and what it thinks are different can have truth only insofar as they differ in form, one being subject the other object. Is it unreasonable to think that thinking and what is being thought are different in any other way that simply in the different forms they assume?

Yet you claim that this is recursive reflexivity! I should like you to tell me how thinking and its content form an infinite regress rather than a necessary distinction that is essential to thinking anything at all. And I should like to know why you may think it necessary that the content of thought should be something utterly different from thought itself, in order that it should not be an infinite regress.

Thought thinks itself, thinking thinks thoughts, and it cannot think anything other than that. No less of a philosopher than Aristotle, himself, concluded that the absolute substance is noesis noesious - the thinking of thinking - thought thinking itself.

After all, what do you think Logic is? Logic is the thought of thinking, the determination of its systematicity. When you say ‘I’ what are you doing? ‘I’ which is thinking, thinks itself - ‘I’ is both subject and object of itself, and that is what we do when we utter ‘I.’ I-as-subject apprehends I-as-object. Yet both are thought, or both are consciousness - the consciousness of consciousness, this is what self-consciousness or ‘I’ means. Consciousness becomes conscious of itself.

Thus, without admitting the thought of thought, it seems to me one denies self-consciousness, thinking with any content, and the ‘I.’ Therefore anyone might want to examine such a claim very carefully to see if they are really willing to give up all these essentialities of life - or if they actually know what they are talking about. This last problem is one that has to be overcome before actual philosophy can even begin.

4. In regard to sleep. You stated that in sleep we do not think. Yet there is obviously dreaming, which is a kind of thinking in terms of images or imagination. When we are not dreaming, then deep sleep may seem to be a cessation of thinking. This is true. But then what exactly is that state of deep sleep? Are we able to think of it in any way at all?

We know we sleep, otherwise how can we talk about it? How can we refer to it? It is not only something we see others doing. We know we also do it. We can think of sleep as the merging of thinking or all thought into the mere indeterminateness of thought, i.e. thought without determination, mere indeterminate thought - or thought that is wholly implicit rather than explicit. Then what do we have? Indeterminate thought, or the thought of indeterminateness is exactly what we call Being.

Being, mere being, is what is wholly indeterminate. To say merely that something ‘is’ says nothing at all about it, except that it is. But everything ‘is’ - so we say nothing determinate when we say of something that ‘it is.’ This is equivalent to indeterminate thought, or indeterminateness.

Thus, in this sense I said that thinking begins with being, or pure indeterminateness - the start of thinking is itself this pure indeterminate thought or thought before any determination is made. Thinking is the disclosure of being (the awakened stage), and being is thought in its dormant or sleeping stage.

5. Epistemology is not separate from ontology. This does not mean that there is no epistemology. It simply means that subject and object are different forms of thought, that are in essence identical as the process of thinking, in which the difference is as valid as the identity. So it is not an all-is-one conception, but an identity-in-difference principle. Epistemology - knowing, or knowledge - is as much a part of ontology as distinct from it. In truth the knower-knowing-known is an inseparable unity yet distinct triplicity of theology-epistemology-ontology which forms the whole of knowledge or truth.

I claim that this is the true form of reason, and reasonableness.”

Supplementary information (as requested by the Inexpressible Committee):

“According to the completeness of our knowledge, being is accordingly disclosed. The more complete our knowledge, the more complete the disclosure of being - or what we are. This means that knowledge or knowing is the disclosure of being. Therefore, the question should be, when is knowledge complete.

Knowledge is complete when it no longer has to go beyond itself, i.e. when knowing fully corresponds to being and being fully corresponds to knowing. At this point knowing knows itself. This is self-knowing Truth or Spirit - God. We can never become God because Being is never fully disclosed to us due to our own infinitesimal nature, therefore, we are always subordinate to God, the self-knowing Truth.”

Mike Marchetti February 16 2005

Response:

In your reply and with reference to Descartes, you claim that “cogito, ergo sum” (or “I am thinking; therefore I am”) is a “certain primary concept”, but then in your supplementary information, you state that “Being is never fully disclosed to us due to our infinitesimal nature”. So in essence, you are saying that although cogito, ergo sum is a primary concept, and Being equates to Thought (and Thought equates to Being), we can “never fully disclose” Being, thereby we cannot completely know who we are. This position (of incompleteness) self-defeats your challenge (in terms of Competition 1), because you are required to more reasonably demonstrate complete knowledge who we are.

Other issues:

1. In your supplementary information, you say that some knowledge is “more complete” than other knowledge. (I.e. “the more complete our knowledge, the more complete the disclosure of Being –or who we are”.) Yet you then say that “Being is never fully disclosed”. So it does not follow to us how there could be “more complete” knowledge when there is incompletion (from the non-full-disclosure of Being). Viz., the notion of completion (without limitations) is contradicted by the existence of incompletion (i.e. “Being never fully disclosed”) no matter how miniscule the incompletion is.

2. Though Descartes’ concept “I am thinking; therefore I am” may not be based on syllogism, it is based on the concepts of “I” and “thinking”. Hence, Descartes’ concept is limited by how he or anyone else defines “I” and “thinking”, and “am”. Though we acknowledge that his concept establishes within limits that we exist (whatever we are), and being or existing is associated with thinking.

3. We agree that “Being” (in the form of thought) only exists as thinking, but the content of Being may refer to something other than thinking. For instance, an individual in deep sleep or meditation may be “being” without thinking. Your retort that deep sleep entails “indeterminate thoughts” is mere speculation because deep sleep being an unconscious activity is beyond our conscious grasp. We can only speculate (or infer) that there are indeterminate thoughts during deep sleep (or deep meditation) without really knowing. Also, it is questionable that indeterminate thoughts, which we are not conscious of, equates to thinking.

For your argument (on Being only existing as thinking) to stand, you would have to demonstrate that human beings’ think continuously while they are alive, but even then it does not necessarily follow in terms of content (rather than form) that Being is identical to Thought. For instance, thinking like eating and breathing may be simply contingent on Being. Though you could argue that thinking is necessary to human existence, and therefore, thinking may be equated to Being, but the same can be said for breathing and eating or any other necessary human activity.

4. In reply to your question on how being is “entirely” different from thought, we do not contend that being is “entirely” different from thought. Though based on the argument that thinking (and being) is necessary to human existence, a case can be made that being (in terms of content) is equated to thinking. Viz., without thinking, there is no being, and without being, there is no thinking. Although this argument is limited by temporality (i.e. possible moments of being without thinking) and the assumption that being (as a non-conscious form or entity like soul) does not exist independent of thinking.

5. Regarding your question as to “how thinking and its content form an infinite regress rather than a necessary distinction that is essential to thinking”, thinking and its content form an infinite regress from our perspective. Viz., we can only know thinking and its content, and what we know is subject to infinite regress. I.e. unless you can demonstrate otherwise, thinking and its content are not complete (or absolute). So we would say that thinking and its content are subject to infinite regress and form a necessary distinction that is essential to thinking.

6. Regarding your question as to why we may think it necessary that the content of thought should be something utterly different from thought itself in order to avoid infinite regress, we do not think that the content of thought should be something utterly different from thought itself in order to avoid infinite regress. We think that anything we know within limits is subject to infinite regress. As mentioned, the content of thought, thought itself, or any other concept can only be known from our perspective, which we contend is subject to infinite regress. (This mind-in-a-box position is premised (major) on our apparent inability to get outside of our minds and know that we are; so we can only know what we know. (I.e. we can only know from our perspective.))

Entries 519-523 Entries 528-532