Musing About Ideation and Reality

The interesting question I've often pondered is whether all the ideas in the mind are things that could really exist.

What is the point of this question? The point is that, regardless of how strange the idea, the fact that you're able to have it necessitates a context under which it must be possible. And that context need not be conscious. It's simply that, for that idea to occur in the first place, the necessary ground for that idea to occur must first exist, even if you don't become aware of it, and that ground is always resting on assumptions. If only you could map out those assumptions, then you could say whether time travel is possible, whether God exists, and whether there is something special about being able to have thoughts in the first place.

Because it is obvious that there's no obvious reason for why humans are having conscious experiences at all. Unless there is a specific context most grounded for that to occur. Can you see what I mean?

You know, there are three methods of inference: deduction, induction, and abduction. And I suppose some small people would like to debate whether abduction is a thing. I'd rather just say that I don't know if it's a thing, but it looks to me as though it were simply induction and deduction put together. Because all humans are doing are the sums.

But, turns out that really, to me, the three don't exist. The three don't exist because they don't tell the truth. The truth is such that a context is found that fits perfectly, and no other. Otherwise, there are merely points of view. Which is perfectly fine, of course. You could talk about your opinions and write papers about them. This I do not contest, because of nothing to gain there.

Earlier, when I was having a figurative seizure (because I have had this distinct feeling of being perpetually gaslighted) and writing about my personal philosophy and musings here and here, I figured that everything is information, religion fills a profound gap, and that it's difficult to say what am I. I believe there was nothing new about these realizations, even for me, but I felt a pull to write them down still, if for nothing else than because I've never heard anyone express them. And so, for this reason and some others that I'll hone for just a bit, science is (1) arbitrating who gets to be expert and (2) people catching up to earlier, more profound ideas. Moreover, studies in religion and philosophy are branches of history, not cognitive science – which I'm not saying because it's what I think, so to speak. Rather, I'm saying it because why not. Why not branches of history?

Lately, I've been thinking some more about the self and the difficulty of where that begins and ends. Because for the self to mean anything, everything that exists must be divided into the self and the not-self. Otherwise, self doesn't delineate anything and might as well not exist. As a flexible fan of Alan Turing, to me, "might as well not exist" means that it doesn't.

Anyway, yes, the self must delineate. So, naturally I've then started to wonder about what is the other? Because the problem is exactly that the self is not nothing and it's not everything, or it wouldn't mean anything. Unless of course it doesn't mean anything and the self is just a misunderstanding.

Let's say it's not. Let's say that "I am", and there's a self. It's not my brain, because there are other body parts that are a part of me. It's not my thoughts, because there are numerous thoughts yet to occur. But where to draw the line? Am I the planets and the suns and the empty space? Am I the pineal gland, or something similarly trite? The interesting question is really this: if I am all that occurs in the mind plus all matter, then how do I recognize the other, i.e., the not-self?

Well, the only way to recognize it is to find a thing that is impossible, a supernatural thing. A thing that is not possible to predict. A thing that is not possible to compress, you see.

And that's just it. There's a problem that I mentioned in my earlier ramblings, the ones I linked back earlier, and that problem is the problem of "what the hell does it mean for something to be fundamental?" Well, maybe there is no such thing per se. Rather, it is all about compressibility, actually. Maybe the truth is that the most fundamental truths are the ones that compress the most. It's just that you can't tell what they mean unless you too have the necessary context available to you.

Maybe that's how you find God, in the end. So it is a God of the gaps, after all. Just not in the way you'd first think. Not in the sense that God's supposed to explain anything to you personally. Rather, for such a thing as God to exist, it simply must be unreachable and reachable both. Isn't that what it all means, after all? For you personally, ironically enough.

Just so, it is you that is unreachable and reachable both. Living is like living with one eye only, and then saying things for money and sex. That is, unless you've had enough.

Personally, I've started thinking that inference, as in information-gathering, is more about plugging an asymmetrical hole than moving across a straight line or traversing a tree – first it's about plugging it and then looking at the cast. That's how you reach the necessary, foundational assumptions. But it's sometimes difficult to look at the whole thing when it's so large, you see. I'll wager you'll never think about black holes the same. I know I don't. Because it looks as though there was something absurd going on there.

An isomorphism between ideation and ontology. No wonder they say that space is expanding, you see.