A Selection of New Thoughts By Nathan Coppedge, #1

1. STATUES MODEL:

Statues appear to explain the current model of metaphysics, in which the Earth revolves around the Sun, and figures walk on the Earth.

The figures walking are clearly the fantasy of statues, little more intelligent than this.

The Earth is clearly the statue's thought of a larger statue, which is doing all that a statue can imagine it would do: to support the smaller statues.

The Sun may be explained as the eye looking upon the statues.

So, the entire local scene is explained in terms of statues!

If we are statues, then it can be argued that there is no coincidence that we feel pain in our brain! After all, what we think of as our brain is really solid rock!

Elidian Leap: Perhaps, however, this is really one version of 3-d metaphysics.


2. The Glass Bead Game

A kindly stranger says:

‘You look like the perfect young poet!’

And he tips his hat, and that is the end of it.

But as you continue on, you begin to look at the landscape:

The little hills with grass, how short the trees are…

The way tulips smell sweetly but aren’t as tall as the trees…

You begin to think you are more of an intellectual…

A dreamer, a Romantic…

Your relatives comment on your wisdom, and you decide to be become a philosopher.

But a stern voice says:

‘Philosophers are born, not made’

And so, you try to justify your past with the idea that you were always a philosopher…

Not just a philosopher, you were a seeker of immortal life!…

You meet Adimus, who says:

‘Is this really your best work…
There are places where you could improve’

And you begin to work more diligently,

And it is like cleaning the stables of Parnassus.

You meet Plato
(or perhaps really a talking statue),
who says

‘From now on you must direct your work
towards only the best aim…
Proceed on the basis of your knowledge
of the good and only the good!’

However, you begin to encounter evils, and wonder about the fairness of life.

You try to hold a firm principle.

You meet Cadmus, who says,

‘From now on, you can try the same efforts,
But you must multiply! Be more effortless,
And reap the great rewards!’

A phase of manic productivity ensues.

Phoebe notes:

‘You have now a hint of intelligence,
so live and prosper by your work,
if you are able!’

You turn a critical eye on old materials, and note that there were shortcomings.

In some places you didn’t have the hint of divine brilliance which you now occasionally find in your work.

Is it a subjective quality?

How much of subjectivity you now know, that you did not know before!

Then you meet Ephesius, who says,
‘That is all well and good, but now
you must do the same, only more
advanced!’

This is generally the beginning of the Gestalt phase of knowledge.


3. On Alexius Meinong (Are existence and non-existence properties or transcendent forms that something can exemplify or participate in or simply have?)

As some famous psychologist or philosopher said, our world is mediated by the visible and invisible. We grant more reality to immediate representations than we do to obscure causes. What is objectively real is not always what has relevance. Whether the real should be taken to be real is in fact an ethical question. Perhaps this is the reason Immanuel Kant and Iris Murdoch have turned to ethics to explain metaphysics.

You are getting into some complex issues. Traditionally in philosophy, the idea that matter is material or immaterial, real or virtual is a matter of theory. Whether perception defines truth is a subject of debate. Science has even raised the concern that that which does not consider itself falsifiable cannot be truthful. If you follow that claim (I don’t), then objective knowledge is out the window. Scientists and empiricists believe that every claim is a matter of understanding the specific circumstances, and all knowledge is approximate.

My own radical theory is that existence is partly conditioned on knowledge, which is itself conditioned on experience. In the ideal sense, there are some artificial processes that we are ignoring when we make ordinary claims. There are real structures of knowledge and experience that precede formal reality. Formal reality is not natural reality per se. Natural reality is conditional. Natural reality is blind unless it literally possesses eyes. Things are built out of materials that fulfill an idea, and when the idea itself has a further idea, the only way not to create a self-reference loop is to ignore the value of the idea.

In short, the failure of power is the failure of consciousness, and yet power is often taken to be a representation. To form an experience from representation requires the eternal, which manifests as time, so that at this point there is a reliance on wisdom which only comes with experience, creating an atavistic process of recovering memories of insignificant events, e.g. because the representation is not a real foundation, while the manifest reason of knowledge which informs existence is most clearly formed from the representation, and the alternative is the same system of failures produced by that reliance. Meanwhile, the eternal has no choice but to consider it symbolic, since it concerns time, which to the eternal means everything significant to it, albeit in higher dimensions. The whole thing is justified by evolution, which rests on free choice. But free choice must accept all prior failures as if it were determined by God.

If you look at this entire set of descriptions, you get a map of my current epistemological position. Absolute knowledge is possible, and yet we live a contingent existence. It is too bad reality does not pay us in ambergris when we make discoveries.

Someone else would say life is a perfect failure, but I think it is potentially both complex and perfect. Our current failure is evolution, but eventually the finest properties will be a continual part of human or post-human thought. The next level of reality may very well consist of living information and living thought. This current dimension is clearly about providing the structure and the standards, the precedents for higher dimensions. Perhaps those who ventured there before had a different system.

4. One should resist electric treatment in the brain, for it is subtlety that produces thought.