Philosophy discussion

Scientists tell us that we have come from star matter. This statement seems reasonable to me. If this is so then it must follow that we are the universe witnessing itself. Surely, this must mean that we are not separate from our surroundings, any more than a tree is separate from the earth out of which it grows, or the air that it breathes or the sunlight that sustains it. Anyone any thoughts on this?

Bent carrots and sore thumbs
I remember being told in school that a root – say a carrot – will sense if there is some toxic substance in the earth and will divert its path of growing and thus avoid growing into this substance. It is possible deliberately to create a bent carrot by putting some noxious substance beneath it in the earth. Do carrots have awareness? Is the carrot different from the earth in which it grows?
I noticed that my hand was hurting without good cause. I then noticed that I had got into the foolish habit of pressing my thumb into the steering wheel as I drove and that this was causing me cramp. So I stopped doing this. I was presumably aware of myself and of my thumb and its foolish behaviour. Is my hand the same as the steering wheel? Is my thumb part of me?

If this is so then it must follow that we are the universe witnessing itself.

It does not follow. Even if we (by which I take it you mean human consciousnesses) are part of the universe, we're not all of it. There is no equivalence.

From a logical standpoint, the idea that we are able to witness this universe isn't directly relevant to the conclusion you're making. That conclusion might be true or false regardless of whether we witness it or not.

What does follow is that if we're part of the universe, we're not separate from it. As an argument, that's valid. Given that, the analogy with the tree is appropriate.

his correct according to Utopian dichotomy. See Versistasis tge actuality of our livibg existence in time. we are necessarily a universe

"Even if we (by which I take it you mean human consciousnesses) are part of the universe, we're not all of it. There is no equivalence."

I think the OP is a case of poor formulation of an otherwise plausible insight. I do not think the OP implies that we in any way must be the whole of the universe in order for us to be a locus of self-awareness within it. If this is so, then I think the latter follows from the former. As Mann put it beautifully in The Magic Mountain: “Consciousness of self was an inherent function of matter once it was organized as life, and if that function was enhanced it turned against the organism that bore it, strove to fathom and explain the very phenomenon that produced it, a hope-filled and hopeless striving of life to comprehend itself, as if nature were rummaging to find itself in itself - ultimately to no avail, since nature cannot be reduced to comprehension, nor in the end can life listen to itself.”

In any case, the OP surely brings up one of THE ultimate questions, ie, regarding the nature of the relation between thought and the mystery of being. The ancients believed mind was a microcosm, and that this peculiar reflection of the all in the particular mind was evinced by the ability of the mind to -comprehend- the natural order, thereby illuminating being through an act of thought. Moderns are wary of mentalistic projection, and for us thought stands precariously perched atop a void, flickering groundlessly in the universe. We do not seem quite sure what ontological locus thought has any more, what relation it has to being (or to put it even better, what kind of being thought has), yet are mystified when mathematical form concocted by pure reason turns out to have empirical validity. Who shall resolve this mess?

If this is so then it must follow that we are the universe witnessing itself.

What I see in this is a metaphysical problem Anthony may not have intended. It's important enough that the vagueness should be cleared up, but I see, too, that the subsequent remarks make clear a specific point.


We do not seem quite sure what ontological locus thought has any more, what relation it has to being (or to put it even better, what kind of being thought has), yet are mystified when mathematical form concocted by pure reason turns out to have empirical validity. Who shall resolve this mess?

I'll take a stab at it. If thought is in some way related to being, regardless of priority, then the form of thought must have some conceivably empirical application, although that may not be obvious until we actually see it. If there could be forms that have no logically possible empirical application, the thought of them would have no connection to being except as the result of a biological process; nor could being emerge from logically impossible forms.

Tyler, by "empirical applicability" what exactly do you mean? Do you understand the empirical in the wider Jamesian sense as coextensive with the experiential, the phenomenological? Or are you referring to it in the somewhat narrower and more formal positivistic sense?

Also, if thought is not related to being, and is not itself an aspect of being, then what is it? Clearly it exhibits a form of being by its very existence, applied or not, just as what we call "mind" does. This is evidential in the phenomenological sense. As I understand it, the key is to specify the nature of its being, and to relate it to the rest of being. This is to me not merely an epistemological problem, but more fundamentally an ontological one.

Hi Elena --

Tyler, by "empirical applicability" what exactly do you mean?

I mean it in a broad sense that includes mental processes.


As I understand it, the key is to specify the nature of its being, and to relate it to the rest of being. This is to me not merely an epistemological problem, but more fundamentally an ontological one.

Yes, I agree. Once it can be seen that thought and being are linked in some way, the next question is how. It's clearest to me to treat epistemology as a function of ontology, but I'm not convinced that the reverse cannot also work, or that the two approaches necessarily contradict one another.

Anthony wrote: "Scientists tell us that we have come from star matter. This statement seems reasonable to me. If this is so then it must follow that we are the universe witnessing itself. Surely, this must mean th..."

You are an individual made out of the material of the universe, so the universe is not you, nor are you the universe. From here it is a matter of useful perspectives. One that I came up with is that we are the universe trying to prevent its own heat death (via our brains and intelligence and problem-solving abilities), but that is silly, since the universe does not think (given the lack of evidence) - it is a chaos system from which we came into existence by pure chance. The Philosophy of Broader Survival takes it from there. Read it.

Yet the universe does think, at least the ephemeral and infinitesimal fragments of the universe known as brains. Nor did they--i.e. "we"--come to be by chance: chance, pure or otherwise, being but the sum of imperceptible necessities.

Agreed. Chance may well be involved in creating gene variants, but we are designed by 'Natural Selection' of those variants.
Going back to the start of this thread, it is probably better to say that we are 'bits' of the universe that are aware of the universe.

The title of the thread is 'non-duality'. I feel this is the best explanation of our relationship with reality. It implies not a relationship but an identity. Sartre has something important to say here. He places our identity beyond the 'me' and 'my world' distinction, as does the Perennial philosophy. Those who explore these things discover that our identity transcends the relative existence required for observing and relating.

“It has always seemed to me that a working hypothesis as fruitful as historical materialism never needed for a foundation the absurdity which is metaphysical materialism. In fact, it is not necessary that the object precede the subject for spiritual pseudo-values to vanish and for ethics to find its bases in reality. It is enough that the me be contemporaneous with the World, and that the subject-object duality, which is purely logical, definitively disappear from philosophical preoccupations.

The World has not created the me; the me has not created the World. These are two objects for absolute, impersonal consciousness, and it is by virtue of this consciousness that they are connected. This absolute consciousness, when it is purified of the I, no longer has anything of the subject. It is no longer a collection of representations. It is quite simply a first condition and an absolute source of existence. "

J P Sartre
The Transcendence of the Ego