There are no hydrogen atoms. Just protons, neutrons, and electrons.

There are no protons or neutrons, just up quarks and down quarks.

Can you categorically state that quarks began to exist?

I don't own a quark

neeeel: 1
zumby: 1
aaron: 0

It's a three-way tie.

nobody owns a quark

I presented the reason why I thought the TAG argument failed. The fact that I didn't then present my full argumentation for that reason doesn't mean that I am "begging the question" (an incorrect usage of that phrase btw). However, I don't mind going into more detail. Maybe we can start a new thread on the TAG argument.

Why not? Why can't they brought into meaningful contact and why is that important?

What is this critique? Does it show that even if Plato's view were true that the world would not be intelligible?

If you mean to be using the plausible/possible distinction like you do here, then I'll just reiterate my view that you are deeply mistaken about its relevance to logical argumentation.

What do you mean by "Can" and "to"?

All joshing aside, this would be useful for you to answer neeel.


btw, I didn't tell you what I thought of as the self, but given the context, I would still go back to an earlier post I made about how the self is a point of view or reference, from which each of us (presumably) experiences reality (or just "experiences"). I think that was partly what OrP had also indicated in another post, well more or less.

Are you stating that:

1. Any idea of self is based on notions that constantly change and as such,
2. There is no permanent or essential quality to what we think of as a "self." 3. And, with this lack of permanence, we could say that no self exists?

Would you agree to some relative or conditional sense of self?

Ok. So what does the theory of self-as-not-an-inherent entity tell us? It seems all you are saying is the bundle theory of self is telling us that self is a bundle of stuff, basically a tautology.



Energy.


I take it from the comments that people see my position as ridiculous and untenable. fair enough.


I have never denied that self is a useful concept

We bundle together a bunch of land, a bunch of people, and a bunch of ideas about the land and people, and label it USA. Does USA exist? I would say no, it doesnt.

Its all just thoughts and concepts. But all thats there, is just some stuff that we call land, with stuff that we call people moving about on it. Just because some of these people seem to move in a way which aligns with the concept of USA, does not mean that USA exists.


We bunch together a bunch of stuff, a bunch of sensations, and a bunch of ideas about the stuff and sensations, and label it a self. Does self exist, I would say, no it doesnt

I think so, yes

I have no problems with a sense of self. I would say that a sense of self is needed to operate in everyday life. But, a sense of self is not a self.

An answer worthy of Protagoras.

Does your world rest on a turtle, which rests on a sammich, which rests on a donkey, which stands on a turtle wich rests on a sammich etc. too? Eventually resting on a turtle, ldo?

I agree with richard feynmann. I dont think zumby would have accepted "I dont know" as an answer, which was my first thought.

plus I dont think we bundle together quarks AND energy. We bundle together some energy, and call it quarks.

fmp

Er, it's interesting to neuroscientists? It is not a trivial or tautological fact that there is no centralized structure in the brain where experience happens. Descartes would be interested too, I reckon.

Is that the only thing in your ontology?

Kinda. By choosing to put everything except energy in the "non-existent" bucket you make the word "exist" almost entirely useless. So, even if we all decided to take up your view, we'd quickly find ourselves inventing a new word for differentiating between the ontological status of Santa and Santana.

But the bigger problem, for me, is that whenever the subject of the self comes up you use the same sort of language as Hood and various neuroscientists use to explain how a Cartesian concept of self is non-existent but, given your ontology, this sort of language and explanation is entirely superfluous. You aren't saying that the self is non-existent in any interesting way because you think that virtually nothing exists. (By "interesting" I mean that you don't have a wide ontology that happens to exclude the self on specific grounds)

Ok, but I dont get how changing a label, or the meaning of a label, makes it more or less interesting to neuroscientists. Plus its not just neuroscientists who want to cling to the word "self".

It will probably turn out that energy doesnt exist either, either that, or that energy isnt actually a "thing" at all.



I get that humans label, divide, differentiate. I do it myself, otherwise I wouldnt be able to communicate. I get that its useful, that we can learn a lot about things that way. I also think its interesting and important to look at whether , although our model is a good one, its really "how things are". I guess you would say that my way of looking at things is useless for modelling reality, and useless for looking at how things really are,and you would probably be right.

do you agree with my USA example in my previous post? Or would you state that USA exists?

This is the same mistake of confusing explanandum with explanans that I criticized in my Hard Determinists thread. You are taking the Cartesian explanation of the self and then declaring it to be the definition of self. But it isn't. Borrowing one of my examples from the HD thread, what you are doing is equivalent to saying "The Earth has always meant 'the 6000 year old planet we live on' so whatever this 4.54 billion year old thing we actually live on is, it isn't the planet Earth." Here are some basic definitions of self

So neuroscientists aren't 'clinging to the self' or w/e. They are examining how the self is grounded in the brain and making interesting findings. They just don't invent a new word every time they find out some new fact about it.

It is very important that we use the findings of science to update and improve our common vocabulary and folk concepts as this is key to a more educated populace. The alternative would be to create a parallel scientific language, divorcing science from everyday life, which is a pretty crappy idea imo.

OK.

Fair enough.

I agree that the existence of the USA is human mind-dependent. I just don't agree that this is equivalent to "does not exist".

I think this is closer to where the real disagreement is here. Yes, the self that neeeel claims is not real is the dualistic self that you also reject. But notice that neeeel also claims that forests, the USA, baseballs, molecules, etc. are not real. This is not an issue specific to the self, but rather an issue of what it means, according to neeeel, to say that something exists.

As near as I can tell, neeeel's view seems to be that in order for something to exist it must be a discrete substance that is uniquely its own and distinct from everything else. This is why his view is so ontologically reductionistic (after all, what is a baseball but a collection of sub-atomic particles?). It's true that on this view, the self is not real. Talking about the self would just be a convenient way of referring to a particular collection of particles, but there isn't a deep reason why we divide up the particles in this way rather than another (i.e. he'll disagree that there is any sense in which our ontology is "carving nature at its joints"). The closest I can get to his view is that he thinks there is space and Democritean atoms banging around, and people draw semi-arbitrary lines around some atoms and call them a "self" or "forest" or "baseball," but we could have with equal justification drawn those lines in very different ways.

Somewhat sceptical. Further above he said this:

Looks like some version of a process ontology (hence, reduction to energy, rather than substances) to me.

Agreed. This is what I was getting at in the last paragraph of post #190:

This is why I'm trying to pin neeeel down to at least one existent thing. Because without that it just seems like his ontological commitment amounts to "a level or two more reductionist than whatever is being discussed right this second" (as per your turtles-all-the-way-down parodies)

I don't think this is right. If neeeel truly accepted some kind of process ontology, then he should not have any problem with saying that the self is real, but that it isn't ultimately a substance but a process. I think him accepting a process ontology would actually be a real advance on his current view as it would allow him make more than negative ontological claims.

My point is that neeeel ultimately wants to say that nothing is real except for some kind of undifferentiated "stuff" (whether that is matter or energy probably doesn't really matter since he admits to not knowing what energy is either). This means that while he might accept that some processes are real, he doesn't think they have enough significance to ground ontological distinctions.

It's like the old joke about being whether you are an atheist about the Anglican god or the Catholic god. Neeeel seems to me an "atheist" about the dualistic ontology.

I like the way that OrP has characterised what I have said, its a lot clearer than my floundering about ( while maybe not being 100% accurate)

So

"nothing is real except for some kind of undifferentiated "stuff" "

And I have no idea what that stuff is, if it is even stuff, and I realise that the stuff may only be one of the turtles, there may be others below that.

With regard to processes, I view them the same way as objects, as in, we are arbitrarily marking out a process, whereas that process is actually the same as any other processes we can arbitrarily mark out.

So what does it mean to say that something exists?

I dont see how you can claim that USA exists. You say its human mind dependent. So is superman. Are you also claiming that superman exists?

Does lebanon exist ( or some other country that is disputed, not sure if its status has been resolved or not). Does it matter if some people claim that it doesnt exist, or shouldnt exist? How many people need to believe it exists, for it to exist?

Your sloppiness of language and logic is going to undo you here. You are conflating multiple concepts of existence (which you've perhaps been doing the entire discussion) and treating them as being equivalent ideas.

You might be doing this out of necessity in order for you to hold your position as being internally consistent, but it seems more like you're doing it because you don't know what else to do.

Edit: I can also phrase this as "What do you mean by exist?"

In which sense is that "undifferentiated stuff" - I believe the term atomless gunk is being used in the discussion - real? Or, since that is the term you use, in what sense does it exist?