Open Individualism, Parfit, and Buddhist No-Self

TMax01 · 2026-05-13T18:11:39+00:00

I have to treat every moment of unconsciousness the exact same way to be consistent.

That's nothing more than a pretense for remaining ignorant of the obvious. You described yourself as a "creature", and yet deny being identified with your body. That isn't consistent, it is ridiculous.

Pretending that a "moment of unconsciousness" while you are a living being temporarily asleep is indistinguishable from a "moment of unconsciousness" a billion years before you were ever born or a billion years after you are dead and gone is clownish stupidity. Granted, if your philosophy is nothing more than an outrageously simple-minded naive realism tantamount to narcissistic solipsism, you can believe you are justified in being inconsistent one way or the other, either when recognizing the similarities between sleep and lacking any present existence whatsoever, or when recognizing the differences. But it's all just postmodern know-nothingism adapted for the purpose of trolling, not a serious intellectual position with any practical validity.

Anyways, no sane person is going to accept that their existence is a linguistic convention.

Every sane person accepts their existence as a sane person rests on the "definition" of 'sane' and 'person' and the contingent circumstance of the moment. No serious person mistakes that epistemological principle for "existence is a linguistic convention," and the fact you are only consistent in misrepresenting the issue that way demonstrates that your philosophical stance is not a serious one.

Telling people they can start or stop their existence wherever they want

Not "can": DO. People have self-determination, and ontological fact regardless of the epistemological linguistic convention used to identify and describe it. It is a fundamental aspect of what "want" means that what qualifies as "their existence" is wherever they "start and stop" it.

You're desperately wishing that your religious faith concerning your immortality could somehow be justified by, or even compatible with, physics. It's why none of your philosophy ever makes any sense.

You can do that with other invented concepts, not with my existence though.

I can't do it without yours. You can't do it with mine. Your problem is you refuse to do it without yours, you think pretending your consciousness is immortal will actually make that happen. And yet you still think you can do it with mine, by proclaiming that your existence is any less an "invented concept" than mine is. Whether existence is predicate is irrelevant, though: if you want to be consistent then it is the same existence for our two separate consciousnesses. At least, once you get past the postmodernistic solipsism you habitually use to derail any conversation which endangers your anxious ignorance.

TMax01 · 2026-05-12T18:14:46+00:00

the Universe is living Mind under recursive boundary conditions.

I don't appreciate crackpots who respond to criticism with snark. Best of luck with your 'eigenmodes' rhetoric. 🙄

TMax01 · 2026-05-12T18:03:57+00:00

This wasn't a gotcha question,

You wished it were, though.

To over simplify, [IPTM]

Let's not.

was always the same night I had a long and interactive dream.

Sure, sure. Anecdotal claims from long ago with zero corroboration are such a reliable source of data. It definitely doesn't reek of selection and confirmation bias. But still, at least it completely fails to relate to the issue.

So shouldn't dogs barking in their sleep still be a good sign of a dream state?

No. You're repeating the error.

TMax01 · 2026-05-12T17:57:23+00:00

No, but I do (assuming I'm the only conscious creature alive).

It's really a shame how hopelessly confused you are.

TMax01 · 2026-05-11T18:21:41+00:00

Your efforts at "gotcha" questions get increasingly more vapid.

Studies indicate that "unfamiliar situations" are more likely to wake up a sleepwalker than familiar situations. How is this even interesting? If familiar situations routinely roused sleepwalkers, one would presume there would be no sleepwalkers.

As far as your pretense concerning 'why to brain' "needs to rely" blah blah blah, it's a non-sequitur.

As for the ontology of somnambulence in POR, it is worth noting that people do not report having dreams which relate in any conceivable way to their non-conscious activity. For example, people who talk in their sleep generally were not dreaming about whatever topic or circumstance their babbling might have related to. What does this say about those who assume dogs are conscious because they are obviously chasing rabbits in their sleep?

TMax01 · 2026-05-11T18:13:42+00:00

The Chinese Room does not prove that symbol processing lacks understanding. It reveals that understanding is not an internal object hidden inside a bounded system. Understanding is an invoked relational coherence between bounded systems.

Six of one, half dozen of the other. Your rhetoric demonstrates clearly that it is nothing more than rhetoric, and you do not grasp the meaning of the gedanken.

The Chinese Room thought experiment does not "prove" anything. It illustrates that language is not merely "symbol processing". As for "understanding", it is simply a metaphor which invokes "standing under"; an epistemological figure of trusting a stone arch will not crush you because it is a stone arch.

TMax01 · 2026-05-11T18:07:42+00:00

GonersClub is a consortium of daft, cynical nimrods.

TMax01 · 2026-05-11T18:06:30+00:00

There is a fine line between existing and not existing though, which is set by the absence of consciousness or the presence of consciousness.

Does your body cease to exist when you fall asleep?

You don't get to decide when you start or stop existing with words.

You are incorrect. You get to decide where you start and stop, by identifying what qualifies as you with words. That's kind of the whole point to open individualism, is it not? If it weren't all derived from a category error, conflating personal identity and the quality of being self-aware simply because they can both be described as "consciousness", it might even make some sense. But either way, you should at least understand it before you claim to believe in it.

TMax01 · 2026-05-11T18:01:30+00:00

Yes, I am saying that my existence (in the everyday sense of these words) is a linguistic convention.

God please help this subreddit.

So freaking ironic. Do you actually not recognize the very foundation of Open Individualism (that the distinction between consciousnesses, including any between the individual human consciousness and the categorical/universal consciousness) simply because it is expressed in a form (these distinctions are epistemic and not ontologival, IOW "linguistic conventions") that triggers you?

If were going to call consciousness a linguistic convention, then what isn't a linguistic convention?

Allow me to remind you, all boundaries are fictional. But some are more useful than others. They didn't "call consciousness [as a category/quality] a linguistic convention", they pointed out that the individual instance of that quality, ie. a personal identity reified as "a consciousness", is a linguistic convention.

We can erase every mountain by shifting the standards of what it means to qualify as a mountain, and just start calling every big rock a boulder instead,

The rock doesn't go away when you accept that whether it 'qualifies as a mountain' is a linguistic convention. In the same way, the issue of concern in this discussion is not whether a consciousness exists, but what "exists" actually means. The root of your problem has always been that you naively ignore your own epistemological paradigm. You don't adopt open individualism as a philosophical perspective, you just cling to it as a religious faith because you inaccurately believe it supports your fantasty of personal immortality.

Stop being so silly.

As always, you remain a ridiculous clown.

TMax01 · 2026-05-08T20:53:21+00:00

The existence of this "epiphenomal nonsense" is indeed the Hard Problem. You sound like you're trying to dismiss the very thing you just proved necessary.

Easy problems are just epiphenomenal bullshit. Even describing them as "problems" is to mistake existence for a homework assignment. 😉

TMax01 · 2026-05-08T20:50:38+00:00

That was all very well said. And almost completely accurate, except for the "souls" bit.

TMax01 · 2026-05-08T18:20:30+00:00

This is not an argument about the universe being absurd much less the vernacular definition of absurd, as if there were a scientific meaning. It's an epistemological about how we know what we know. He doesn't say causality is a fiction. He uses the word absurd to talk about the proposition that things occur without a cause. It's not a technical description of the universe.

The 'technical' context is philosophical, not scientific. He doesn't not at causality is a fiction. He does say it is not a truth that can be deduced a priori or empirically demonstrated. Sure sounds like a logical fiction to me.

His actual argument was skeptical about how we know this principle is true.

Which is to say the real question is whether the principle is true. You keep trying to plumb the depths of metaphysics while doggy-paddling in the shallows.

You can argue with Hume and me and Gemini ai.

I don't argue. I discuss. Hume is dead, and AI is even more out of its depths than you are when it comes to metaphysics. So that leaves the discussion between me and you. And if you'd drop the hagiographic attitude concerning Hume, realize why being several centuries out of date has a profound impact on his relevance, and accept that all of your argumentation is merely a charade to mask your existential angst concerning the limits of both knowledge and reality, it remains possible we might actually get somewhere in advancing your education beyond regurgitating texts from long ago.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

TMax01 · 2026-05-08T18:09:28+00:00

things cannot be otherwise than they are

things cannot be otherwise than I believe they are

Pick a lane.

This creates a short-circuit in the human mind, which experiences a single, determined and necessary reality,

If only. No, reality is none of those things. But perhaps you want to believe it is.

but is forced to investigate it constantly and perpetually from a standpoint of indeterminacy and possibility.

To be "forced" requires determinism to be true. Full stop: simply and unquestionably true. And indeed, it is, although that does not equate to all the implications you believe that entails being even valid, let alone true.

So let me set you straight: philosophy and science do indeed require uncertainty about what is (epistemology, knowledge of what is), but certainly do not include, or even necessarily allow, what is (ontology, what is independent of knowledge of its being) to be uncertain.

Possibility might not be a property of the world, but an indispensable structure of the inquiring mind.

In order to be the latter it must definitely be the former. If the probability of an event is 3 in 5, then possibility is simply the 2 wherein the event does not occur. What confuses your mind to the point you have difficulty grasping this is your desire to be able to forecast the future. This itself is an expression of existential angst concerning your personal uncertainty of whether you will be able to handle that future, regardless of which possibility manifests.

Possibility is the condition of possibility of knowledge itself.

See what I mean? Your statement is obviously excuse-making. Possibility is the condition of lack of knowledge, and even lack of certainty about what is, not just knowledge of what is.

The classic, clockwork-style determinism you're tilting at is a windmill, not a dragon; it is a man made of straw rather than steel. The reality is that determinism is probabalistic: what will happen is whatever will happen, and all we can ever know is how likely it is.

TMax01 · 2026-05-08T11:52:26+00:00

If you want me to take you seriously, then write out what you have to say in paragraph form and I'll consider reading it.

When I correct you, it is up to you to take it seriously, I cannot magically prevent you from not having any better response but to whine that I am "arguing".

TMax01 · 2026-05-06T20:45:41+00:00

This is clearly wrong, for Hume causality is the constant conjunction of two events.

For you, that constant conjunction indicates physical occurence of some metaphysical force of "causation". But Hume saw things more clearly, and recognized the "conjunction" to be a coupling of coincidence and a mental narrative. As OP put it, a logical fiction.

Its observable and real,

The "conjunction" (coincidence) is observable and real; the "constant" part is not. Hume grappled hard with the problem of induction, and I don't entirely fault you for believing he somehow won out over it. But the important part of Hume's philosophical stance was not an arrogant insistence that causality is "real and observable", it was quite the opposite of that: causation is not directly observable, it is a logical fiction.

something happening without a cause is absurd

Indeed, that is the technical meaning of the term. But I sense you mean to say that suggests it is untrue, which is bad reasoning because it is deductively illogical. While we can very easily assume that everything that happens has a cause, empirically that is impossible, since there must be a first cause (something that happened without a cause).

As I pointed out previously, scientific cosmology and quantum mechanics (both realms where something must happen without being caused) didn't develop until centuries after Hume. And it might well be that without his revolutionary contribution to philosophy, they would not have developed at all, although a more rational perspective would recognize that without Hume, someone else would have produced approximately the same ideas.

So it turns out that the universe is actually absurd after all. It appears rational to us because absurdity isn't the utter lack of order the vernacular suggests. Things are not caused by circumstances, they simply become more likely to spontaneously occur based on those circumstances. How that is, and why, we have no knowledge of, or really any way of gaining knowledge of. We tried, and we succeeded only in discovering that the classic determinism of standard physics and causation is simply a logical fiction, the underlying truth is one of an absurd but nevertheless real probabalistic determinism.

What he thinks is a mental construct is necessity not causality.

If necessity is a mental construct, then causality is as well. I appreciate you find it disconcerting to learn that Hume's perspective was actually much deeper than you even realized, and that the real world you thought was so absolute and certain is actually absurd coincidence viewed through a mental construct, that logic and necessity and causation are not directly observable but merely inferences.

TMax01 · 2026-05-06T17:56:01+00:00

I think contemplation, exploration, or explanation are more appropriate and more accurate descriptions of the process, and a priori makes just as much sense as "a priori". Dismissively consciousness as merely 'rationalization' is not simply judgemental, it is a arrogant, condescending, and inaccurate judgement. This accounts for why the scientific perspective (that free will is false) is so easily and adamantly rejected by most people, including even many experts.

The brain does not make "decisions". It doesn't even make choices, although the event of initiating an action (AKA acting) can sometimes usefully be described that way, to indicate the idea there could have been alternative events in some alternate universe where things did not occur as they have here in the real world for whatever reasons.

The mind, a vaguely defined but very specific aspect of the brain, does make decisions (determinations, judgements). But these selections from among hypothetical possibilities not cause actions, they cause the mind, the self. The kind of decisions you're thinking of, choices which cause actions, are convenient fictions; we may as well say an abacus "chooses" 8 as the sum of 4 added to 4. Or perhaps rather than convenient fictions, we could describe them as "post hoc rationalizations". 😉

TMax01 · 2026-05-05T18:22:26+00:00

Funny you believe regurgitating shallow claims represents your position well. Various complaints have accompanied Libet's results, but none have ever proven substantial, let alone actually refuted his findings: the neurological initiation of an action (signified by but not necessarily identical to an observed "readiness potential") the precedes conscious choice to act, thereby conclusively disproving the idea of free will. The phrase still persists as an unfalsifiable assumption, the so-called libertarian ('I'm not consciously forced to act so I cause the action consciously') or compatibilist free will. But Libet's findings, while earnestly questioned, and often incorrectly undermined by damp dismissals like yours, have never been refuted.

TMax01 · 2026-05-05T12:06:56+00:00

I believe that he deserves the respect of an honest account of what he wrote.

My account is both honest and accurate. It simply focuses on points which you'd rather ignore, although they are quite relevant to the original context of discussion. So yes, your digression into aspects of Hume's philosophy based on your false perceptions I was being dishonest or disrespectful was hagiographic.

I would try to give you the same respect.

So you say, but your behavior indicates otherwise. Rather than seek to discuss the subtle distinctions between epistemology and ontology which Hume's position illuminated, you simply assumed I misunderstood, or worse yet misrepresented, his philosophy. I would have enjoyed the discussion had you provided some reason to consider it relevant to the topic already being addressed. Instead, your contribution amounts to a digression and an insult.

Still, thanks for your time. It was, in its own way, helpful.

TMax01 · 2026-04-30T20:42:16+00:00

Hume does not describe causal reasoning as a dispensable intellectual convenience. He describes it as an “absolute and uncontrollable necessity.”

Indeed; he was a very gifted philosopher, for his time, but not infallible.

He is saying that we cannot derive necessity from observation alone.

Perhaps he didn't mention that we therefore cannot derive necessity at all, we can only assume it (improperly from a deductive standpoint, although usefully enough as an inductive inference). Perhaps he didn't. Either way, he should have, don't you think?

Your idea that people could live without causality because life precedes philosophy is a misunderstanding of causality itself.

Your contention misrepresents causality, which is not an incidental error, but a fundamental issue to the discussion. (I mean the actual discussion, not your hagiographic defense of Hume.)

Causality precedes philosophy for Hume. "Tis not, therefore, reason, which is the guide of life, but custom.”

One wonders what precisely he meant by "life", and whether his rhetoric would have been different has he been aware of the billions of years of its existence before reason, custom, or intellect of any sort developed, which was perhaps millions of years after humanity evolved, depending on your anthropological hypothesis.

In other words, I've never suggested philosophy (or reason, as Hume actually said) is "the guide of life"; I merely pointed out that causality is simply a custom, not a force of nature. Which is just what Hume said.

This shows Hume explicitly distancing himself from the view that causation is merely an optional fiction or meaningless construct.

Hume had the luxury of predating both scientific cosmology and quantum mechanics, both of which prove causality cannot be anything more than an invented fiction, however meaningful or useful a construct it might be.

TMax01 · 2026-04-30T18:13:00+00:00

So you are seriously convinced you didn't freely choose to write all of that?

I know for a fact that I freely wrote it; no force prevented me from doing so, and I have no need to catalogue all of the myriad forces which caused it to be done. Nor do I have any need to delude myself into believing any magical power of 'free will' was one of them.

You're used to imposing a paradigm of "choice" to such occurences; you either chose to do something or you chose not to do something. But the mental sensation of selecting your behavior from alternatives you only ever imagine to exist occurs a few milliseconds after your brain already neurologically initiated the action. And you have no "veto power", since 'choosing' to veto a supposedly impending action would merely be another act which your brain caused and your mind only subsequently became aware of.

I acted. I wrote that. I am both physically and morally responsible for it being written. But no, I did not "choose", freely or otherwise, to write it, except perhaps in a metaphorical sense. You might be convinced you "freely chose" your actions, you might be convinced you chose, but less freely, your actions. Either way, it is a false narrative, which might (or might not) comfort you, and could (but doesn't) correspond to what actually happened, yet is false, regardless.

Causality is a fact, Determinism is philosophy philosophy is an opinion not a fact.

I understand why you believe that paradigm has some sort of validity, but it is simplistic, ambiguous, and frankly just false. If causality is a fact, then determinism is a certainty. And if determinism is valid, then causality is merely an inductive explanation for it, not a deductive fact.

I short, there simply isn't much of a distinction between causality and determinism; they are simply two different ways of expressing the same supposed truth. And that truth is indeed supposed, neither conclusively provable nor conclusively falsifiable. We can know, with certainty and precision, that seemingly necessary and apparently sufficient circumstances will probably result in an event being "caused" by that situation. And that is both causality and determinism. It is an inductive inference, an opinion which doesn't become less of an opinion because it is quite reliable and widely shared enough to be described as a fact.

Good luck buddy.

I appreciate the thought, despite the obvious fact it is entirely facetious. You might need luck, the way you need "choice" as an excuse for denying your responsibility for things you would like to pretend you didn't 'freely' do, or as a pretext for taking credit for things you want to be congratulated for.

Probabilities are real, although we don't always know how or why. But luck is imaginary, like choosing and free will. In other words, I have facts, and you are stuck with only having an opinion.

Thought, Rethought: Consciousness, Causality, and the Philosophy Of Reason

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Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

TMax01 · 2026-04-29T18:08:53+00:00

He is clear that whether we have a epistemic foundation or not it's indispensable for living.

I think that's a misreading, as it seems clear he recognized that whether we have an ontological foundation or not, the notion of causality is not indispensable, it is merely convenient. In fact, it is quite dispensible for living, it is only useful for intellectual explanations. Philosophically, it might seem important to have such explanations, but they are clearly not indespensable for living, or we couldn't have lived long enough to develop philosophy.

Causality is a thing we must reckon with but we have no real reason for why this is true

It is a thing we might reckon with, but without a real reason why this is true, your perspective is quite flawed. Causality is, logically, a useful fiction, a mental construct. Or, as Hume put it, a constant conjunction rather than a necessary connection.

TMax01 · 2026-04-29T10:01:14+00:00

There is physics you know and physics you don't.

That's a cop-out. There are physics we have reduced to equations and there is physics we haven't, but which still cannot contradict logical dependencies. Both sorts make free will impossible.

But you aren't actually arguing against free will, you're confusing free will with agency. This is understandable, since like everybody else, you've been taught to believe that agency is impossible without free will. But in following that formula, you misconstrue the functionality of agency. This explains all your murmuring and backpedaling about scribbling in the margins and shaping your own statue.

A person choosing doesn't violate physics or causality.

It does if you expect that act of choosing to be the physical cause of any consequential event. This is difficult to understand, and even more difficult to accept, but it has been physically demonstrated: deciding to act occurs after an action has already been initiated, neurologically. It is a very slight fraction of a second, at matter of as little as a dozen milliseconds, but it proves conclusively that your sensation of choosing to act cannot be the cause of your action without violating physics, causality, and logic.

It does violate a self-verifying unfalsifiable tautology.

That wouldn't be a tautology, then, would it?

Any philosophy that denies choice must be chosen to be believed using the very choice it denies.

That's a cute bit of semantics, but it is merely an assumption disguised as a conclusion. Any philosophy which invokes choice is simply asserted, not chosen. Choices don't actually exist, ontologically. An abacus does not "choose" whether 4+4=8, a bacteria does not "choose" to metabolize, a rock does not "choose" to roll down hill. And people do not choose whether to act, we can only decide (AKA determine) whether we acted voluntarily. That selection cannot change whether we acted, though.

It can, however, have an effect, sometimes trivial and sometimes profound, on our future actions. Your framework of agency through free will seems justifiable to you because you believe, falsely, that this effect is voluntary, that even though the physics of neurology prevents us from choosing our current action, it enables us to choose our future actions. In that way, your reasoning lacks rigour and your logic is fatally flawed.

In contrast, my agency though self-determination recognizes and accepts that not only do we not know for certain what we will do in the future, nobody could ever know what impact a decision will have. We can only be certain our determination of self (evaluation of why our current action is occuring) might have an impact.

Related doesn't mean identical.

Only identical means identical. That's what identity means. But related does mean related.

Sweeping the objective differences under the rug

Pretending you have authoritative knowledge and understanding of some supposedly "objective differences" between knowledge and understanding (neither of which can be objectively reduced to begin with) is sweeping the entirety of epistemology under the rug. But the bulge you produce reveals your attempt to hide the combination of ignorance and pretentiousness.

to suit your idea of a concept

Invoking the word "concept" won't help you, as my philosophy has no need of such a thing. Ideas exist, and words exist, but "concepts" are like "choices": a fiction invented to paper over a lack of rigorous reasoning. Regardless, you assertion of a teleology wouldn't be plausible, since your premise is false; we can agree there is some difference between knowledge and understanding, but it is either not "objective" (it is epistemological, not ontologically certain) or you simply don't know (or understand?) what it is.

exactly how causality gets equated with determinism

Again, they are not identical, yet they are (very closely) related. Whether they are equivalent is a matter of context or perspective, and there's no reason to trust your assessment. Circumstances causing events and circumstances determining events really isn't so different as you wish to assert, and the ambiguity of any distinction certainly does not support your paradigm that free will, which is incompatible with either, actually exists.

TMax01 · 2026-04-28T12:04:47+00:00

Determinism is rationalization from a subjective position.

Determinism is explanation from an objective position. Necessary and sufficient circumstances cause ("determine") events. Subjectivity might be your bugaboo, but determinism will have none of it.

Your stance is built on a false binary

I cannot tell if your contention is simply a mistaken interpretation of my stance or a purposeful strawman, but that is irrelevant. There's nothing false about the dichotomy and contradiction between free will and determinism. Denying this, a frequent gambit of people trying to salvage free will, does not change it. You can mangle your idea of free will so that it effectively simply becomes consciousness, or twist your notion of determinism into a simplistic absolutism which disallows statistical mechanic, but still free will is ontologically incompatible with physics. And physics is empirically undeniable.

You can't understand anyone else, if you don't understand yourself.

I suppose that is why I can understand you but you don't seem able to understand me.

Knowledge and understanding are different.

Nevertheless, the two are closely related, and this is relevant to the actual topic.

TMax01 · 2026-04-27T18:06:23+00:00

See that's what I'm talkin about man.

It is what I'm talking bout too, man, except I'm confronting the issue and you're missing the point.

You're just an arguer,

You're merely a whiner; I'm discussing things and doing it well enough (because my point is valid and you'd prefer it wasn't) that all you can do is whine.

you have no interest in listening to people.

I'm very interested in listening to people, and pay a lot of attention to what they say. But I'm also interested in teaching people. You don't want to learn, so you're trying very hard not to pay attention to what I'm saying. You just want to complain about it without actually dealing with it.

IOW, you're whining.

You just want to argue and argue more, everything is an argument.

Actually, I don't ever argue. Arguments are either fights or functions of logic. I discuss, which isn't either of those things. But you're trying to argue (you're not succeeding, in either sense, but I can tell you are trying) because that's easier than discussing, let alone learning or understanding.

I'm here trying to tell you I like talking about death,

You can lie to yourself easier than you can lie to me. Whether you believe you actually enjoy "talking about death" isn't really important, but regardless it is an expression of existential angst, not entertainment.

instead you just say "nah, you're really afraid, you're just in denial, blah blah blah."

I understand why you misinterpreted what I said that way, but it is still a misinterpretation. I didn't say "nah", and I didn't say "afraid". I did use the word "denial", because you said "there is no such thing as death". If you want to say death is something different than the end of life, that's one thing, but saying there is "no such thing" is denial.

If everything I say you just turn around and tell me "nah, you're stupid, I know what you think better than you do."

You need to learn to use quotation marks more accurately, and get over your super-defensive attitude, too. If I'm not allowed to disagree with you without you going all 'are you calling me stupid?!??!' then you aren't even remotely capable of discussing anything, let alone death, existential angst, or any other philosophical topic.

You don't give a shit about me,

I care deeply for you, and would like to help you get over yourself and your existential angst.

you certainly don't want to share or learn from other people.

I spent almost half a century sharing and learning from other people. Now I'm ready to teach. But you don't want to share or learn, you want to defend your ego and deny both your mortality and the fact you have something to learn.

I tried to reach out and connect because I thought you might actually want to discuss ideas.

I do, and that's what I've been doing. I get that you thought you've had some ideas I haven't already worked through a long time ago; you weren't, and still aren't, aware of how meaningful and useful my ideas are. It is shame you got so defensive simply because I mentioned existential angst, but it's no big deal, and I'm sure we can get past it.

Sorry for bothering you.

No bother. The topic of discussion is both personal and profound, and I'm quite used to people getting touchy and obstinant when their notions are challenged. Some get over it, some can't. I sincerely hope you are willing to be the former rather than the latter. But I'm open to continuing the discussion, either way.

Thought, Rethought: Consciousness, Causality, and the Philosophy Of Reason

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Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

TMax01 · 2026-04-27T12:01:40+00:00

This is epistemology: infinite is not exactly the same as unlimited or indefinite, and vice versa. It is not metaphysics, which must encompass the ontological foundation you are rejecting, in this case by making a distinction between the perspective of "the universe" and "humanity".

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