Koldo
Outstanding Member
Which still entails boundaries and contingency.
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God is simple, not complex
- Thread starter Gambit
- Start date
Which still entails boundaries and contingency.
Gambit
Well-Known Member
Why is it contingent?
Koldo
Outstanding Member
Because there is a multitude of things that are contingent. 'Wholeness' includes them all.
Gambit
Well-Known Member
Just because finite beings participate in infinite being does not imply that infinite being is dependent on finite beings for its existence.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
To exist 'as is', it does. But more importantly, boundaries delineate what it is and what it is not.
I - and you - can infer that we're aware from our memory of being aware a moment ago and from a lifetime of experience that is consistent with my memory of awareness being correct and not consistent with this memory being incorrect. This is subject to a degree of uncertainty due to the limitations on induction and the problem of hard solipsism, but it's the best we can do and seems to work fine (so far).
Gambit
Well-Known Member
Why?
Infinite being is unlimited and therefore without boundaries. Wholeness is one and without opposite.
prometheus11
Well-Known Member
Emptiness? Nothingness? Hmmm
Koldo
Outstanding Member
Because our state of affairs is composed of multiple things that would not exist in another possible world.
To exist 'as is' is to include the existence of the current state of affairs.
Once you say what something is, it becomes apparent what it is not. That's the boundary.
Awareness is a relation of mind to things. It's an effect of things. If there were no things to be aware of, there could be no awareness.
Suggesting that one is aware of awareness says no more than that one has held the thought, "I am aware." There is nothing more to it--else it's like taste buds tasting themselves or the hearing listening to itself. If they could do that, they would be the sensed instead of the instrument of sensation. A ruler doesn't measure itself, it measures other things. Awareness is all about the things--by itself, it's transparent in every regard. One might call it illusion.
Reflex
Active Member
Exactly. Plotinus was very clear about that. The One is above numeration, but a term used because it was closest to what was meant. On the other hand, Wholeness is meaningless without "otherness."
The One does not, of course, need the contingent in order to be, but it does need them in order to find meaning; there is an interdependence.
Holophany: The Loop of Creation gives an interesting view on this.
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outhouse
Atheistically
The One "can" be above numeration. Not is
Gambit
Well-Known Member
What is the "I" in this context?
So, you don't believe awareness has the capacity to reflect upon itself?
Gambit
Well-Known Member
God is not dependent on "our state of affairs composed of multiple things" for God's existence.
I would say that there is a logical distinction, but this doesn't until some kind of (physical) boundary.
Gambit
Well-Known Member
So, our present experience of "self-awareness" is actually an experience of a past memory of "I am aware?"
Reflex
Active Member
No...the "I" is the thinker of the thought. Thought is the content of awareness.
We differ. "I" came about because language, specifically the mechanism of a subject-object divide, forged our ways of thinking about ourselves. It teaches us, from the earliest exposure and then reinforced with each use of the subject in language, that a thought requires a thinker.
outhouse
Atheistically
Merry xmas bud!