A Guru is made by the judgement of fools. It takes a fool to accept it.
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A provisional argument ‘why there is something rather than nothing’:
1. Consciousness is self-evident and implies that there is something rather than nothing.
2. Therefore, we know that there is something rather than nothing.
3. All identifiable existence consists in the idea of its identity as an existent, therefore existence is internal to consciousness, otherwise contradiction (an idea that is not an idea).
4. Knowing that there is something rather than nothing is a sufficient reason that there is something rather than nothing.
5. There is something rather than nothing because consciousness.
6. Consciousness is timeless and has no cause, because time and causality are internal to consciousness, otherwise contradiction (an idea that is not an idea).
EDIT: there is something rather than nothing because consciousness necessitates something rather than nothing.
‘Something rather than nothing’ is an essential property of consciousness, and the question ‘why’ presupposes consciousness. ‘Something rather than nothing’ is therefore presupposed by the question. This possibly makes the question logically inconsistent: implies that the implied answer is not implied.
1. Consciousness is self-evident and implies that there is something rather than nothing.
2. Therefore, we know that there is something rather than nothing.
3. All identifiable existence consists in the idea of its identity as an existent, therefore existence is internal to consciousness, otherwise contradiction (an idea that is not an idea).
4. Knowing that there is something rather than nothing is a sufficient reason that there is something rather than nothing.
5. There is something rather than nothing because consciousness.
6. Consciousness is timeless and has no cause, because time and causality are internal to consciousness, otherwise contradiction (an idea that is not an idea).
EDIT: there is something rather than nothing because consciousness necessitates something rather than nothing.
‘Something rather than nothing’ is an essential property of consciousness, and the question ‘why’ presupposes consciousness. ‘Something rather than nothing’ is therefore presupposed by the question. This possibly makes the question logically inconsistent: implies that the implied answer is not implied.
The laws of sense are an algorithm for transforming noise into meaning.
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The daily practice of “Acknowledgement of Original Custodians/Owners” is nowadays the most common manifestation of ‘fixated personality disorder’. It is a mental health issue.
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The whole point of “affordable housing” is to force little people to accept less for more, to put you in a cell but also convince you to pay for it, including all living expenses and local government taxes. The angle they use is “getting into the property market”;)
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The objects of perception are ‘given’ to us (involuntary) in the same way that most thoughts emerge in our mind, involuntarily. The only difference is how what we call perceptions of ‘reality’ are integrated with one another. ‘Reality’ is a realm of meaning integrated on the basis of the idea of causality, whereas other thoughts are integrated only on the basis of correlation, implication and identity.
A Theological Hypothesis:
Zion is a state of mind, a state of transcendental understanding, not a place, a nation-state, or a nation.
The Old Testament / Torah was the first teaching that guided humanity from their primitive state towards transcendence. After a period of human development through obedience, the first teaching was superseded by the New Testament, raising the scope of moral understanding. After 2000 years, the second teaching has reached its potential to guide human development and now a third teaching is necessary, written in contemporary language, consistent with the developed standards of reasoning and persuasive to all, including atheists.
Here is an introductory text that sought to establish the narrative continuity from the first, to the second and to the third teaching:
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/transcendental-theology-for-non-believers
Here is my attempt to articulate the third teaching, which now takes form as a matter of logical necessity. No individual can consistently claim to be the original author of the third teaching, one may merely articulate it, because the third teaching emerges on the systemic level of consciousness and affirms the function of social reflexivity as the mechanism of meaning creation.
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/announcing-book-release
Zion is a state of mind, a state of transcendental understanding, not a place, a nation-state, or a nation.
The Old Testament / Torah was the first teaching that guided humanity from their primitive state towards transcendence. After a period of human development through obedience, the first teaching was superseded by the New Testament, raising the scope of moral understanding. After 2000 years, the second teaching has reached its potential to guide human development and now a third teaching is necessary, written in contemporary language, consistent with the developed standards of reasoning and persuasive to all, including atheists.
Here is an introductory text that sought to establish the narrative continuity from the first, to the second and to the third teaching:
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/transcendental-theology-for-non-believers
Here is my attempt to articulate the third teaching, which now takes form as a matter of logical necessity. No individual can consistently claim to be the original author of the third teaching, one may merely articulate it, because the third teaching emerges on the systemic level of consciousness and affirms the function of social reflexivity as the mechanism of meaning creation.
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/announcing-book-release
Substack
Transcendental Theology for Non-Believers
Pope Benedict XVI argued that it is "necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason" and to understand "theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith." (Ratzinger 2006) The idea that faith per se can be reconciled with…
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Welcome to a “Fenced Community”, your community. 😂 (affordable housing, priced at $750k per unit) https://www.news.com.au/national/like-a-prison-panned-housing-plan-demonstrates-broader-trend-in-australias-property-market/news-story/4f8b6e4c09e4fd59647983ec099603e4
Free Energy
The concept of energy may be defined as the capacity for change. Change is an essential property of being and time, therefore energy is eternal and inexhaustible. We are not limited by the availability of energy but by our ideation of change and of the things that are subject to change, and these concepts are not immutable. Energy is essentially meaning, and meaning is transformed by consciousness. Consciousness is the primary capacity for change and therefore a fundamental form of energy, to which all physical forms of energy are subordinate.
The concept of energy may be defined as the capacity for change. Change is an essential property of being and time, therefore energy is eternal and inexhaustible. We are not limited by the availability of energy but by our ideation of change and of the things that are subject to change, and these concepts are not immutable. Energy is essentially meaning, and meaning is transformed by consciousness. Consciousness is the primary capacity for change and therefore a fundamental form of energy, to which all physical forms of energy are subordinate.
We can give one name to ‘experience’ and insist that it represents a coherent synthesis of some multiplicity of elements, but this is not equivalent to experiencing the multiplicity as an instantaneously grasped, synthetic whole. It often happens that the narrative synthesis (which we take for a meaningful experience) of multiple elements turns out to be inconsistent, and so we revise our attempted synthesis of experience well after the alleged experience has already passed, which in turn implies that we have not experienced it as a unity in the first place, that what we regard as a particular ‘experience’ in time is a continuously evolving construction that has no meaning outside of consciousness and no particular place in time.
In order to evade inconsistency we must ask: what unifies a multiplicity of content derived from past thoughts into the present thought that draws on that content, while accepting that ‘presence’ and ‘thought’ already imply unity (or else they would make no sense). My position on this that the only unifying/synthesising property is sense, the laws of sense, according to which meaning is constructed and without which meaning collapses.
In order to evade inconsistency we must ask: what unifies a multiplicity of content derived from past thoughts into the present thought that draws on that content, while accepting that ‘presence’ and ‘thought’ already imply unity (or else they would make no sense). My position on this that the only unifying/synthesising property is sense, the laws of sense, according to which meaning is constructed and without which meaning collapses.
‘Look before you leap’ was misconstrued as ‘prevention is better than cure’, which is as unfounded as ‘offence is the best defence’, which taken together morphed into “kill all innocents because they might grow up to hate you’.
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Those who make the law are above the law, because our judgment cannot be subject to a law if the law is subject to our judgment, therefore every ‘law’ that is made is not law, it has no authority, because it is non-sense. (EDIT: this does not preclude governments and lawmakers doing what is objectively right.)
The Strategy of Tension
The strategy of permanent tension dictates that after all the performative buildup about Epstein Files, and Trump performatively suppressing the files, the files will be eventually released with nothing incriminating on Trump. Emotional saturation is a reliable diversion from mass murder as usual.
The strategy of permanent tension dictates that after all the performative buildup about Epstein Files, and Trump performatively suppressing the files, the files will be eventually released with nothing incriminating on Trump. Emotional saturation is a reliable diversion from mass murder as usual.
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We have the capacity to condition ourselves, intentionally; animals do not.
Non-sense is not an isolated property; it is meaningful only as a discontinuity of sense, therefore possible only when embedded in sense. This is how non-sense embedded in meaningful information can be ‘communicated’.
On the impossibility of a Just War
If the moral right to wage war is conditional on ‘legitimate authority’, which is exclusive of some but inclusive of others, then there is no moral right to wage war because objective morality is agent-neutral: some actions/intentions are right or wrong as a matter of principle. Otherwise, ‘legitimate authority’ (whatever that means in practice, since political authority is a morally arbitrary standard) would be exempt from morality, which contradicts the premise of morality (as a normative principle stemming from the moral status of humanity).
I accept as uncontroversial that an individual has the right to defend their existence. Nevertheless, since war can be waged only by a state or nation, then it does not apply to individuals unless the individual identifies with the state/nation. This raises a secondary moral question: is it morally permissible for an individual to get involved in a war on behalf of the state/nation that does not apply to the individual without choosing to be involved. Moreover, since the individual does not have the capacity to know the actual reasons for war/killing, but only the reasons provided by the state, then it is not within the capacity of the individual to determine whether the killing on behalf of the state is justified, therefore it is never morally permissible for the individual to intentionally take part in war.
If the moral right to wage war is conditional on ‘legitimate authority’, which is exclusive of some but inclusive of others, then there is no moral right to wage war because objective morality is agent-neutral: some actions/intentions are right or wrong as a matter of principle. Otherwise, ‘legitimate authority’ (whatever that means in practice, since political authority is a morally arbitrary standard) would be exempt from morality, which contradicts the premise of morality (as a normative principle stemming from the moral status of humanity).
I accept as uncontroversial that an individual has the right to defend their existence. Nevertheless, since war can be waged only by a state or nation, then it does not apply to individuals unless the individual identifies with the state/nation. This raises a secondary moral question: is it morally permissible for an individual to get involved in a war on behalf of the state/nation that does not apply to the individual without choosing to be involved. Moreover, since the individual does not have the capacity to know the actual reasons for war/killing, but only the reasons provided by the state, then it is not within the capacity of the individual to determine whether the killing on behalf of the state is justified, therefore it is never morally permissible for the individual to intentionally take part in war.
Forwarded from Normal Chat
There are things that bind us together at a far deeper level than the superficiality of statehood or nationhood. Any meaning implicates all conscious beings, reflexively organised to sustain it.
Consciousness is intrinsically a reflexive multiplicity, where every instance of consciousness - a point of view embedded in the narrative continuity of events - continuously attempts to conceive of itself in relation to others, but in doing so it inescapably augments itself. The Self-relation is therefore essentially incomplete: the idea of Self is not identical with the instance of consciousness that is conceiving of it.
Emergence of thought is a process whereby consciousness attempts to grasp itself, to mirror itself, to complete its self-ideation in terms of meaning held in common with other instances of consciousness, and thus perfect itself.
Another way, every instance of consciousness is logically incomplete and unstable in its self-ideation and seeks to stabilise itself by relating with other instances of consciousness. Whenever inconsistency in Self-ideation is identified, a though arises to compensate for it, to maintain the tentative integrity of Self. Every expectation, every disappointment, every belief, every idea, compensate for the imperfect integrity of Self.
Crucially, how we deal with prior realisations of inconsistency of self-ideation influences how we respond to new realisations of inconsistency, and this can go either way, towards greater stability of self-ideation or towards catastrophic instability. The process can indeed be self-amplifying, but it is fundamentally governed by the laws of sense, insofar as we can discern them and apply them to our conception of the world and with the idea of Self being embedded in it.
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/theory-of-reflexive-consciousness
Emergence of thought is a process whereby consciousness attempts to grasp itself, to mirror itself, to complete its self-ideation in terms of meaning held in common with other instances of consciousness, and thus perfect itself.
Another way, every instance of consciousness is logically incomplete and unstable in its self-ideation and seeks to stabilise itself by relating with other instances of consciousness. Whenever inconsistency in Self-ideation is identified, a though arises to compensate for it, to maintain the tentative integrity of Self. Every expectation, every disappointment, every belief, every idea, compensate for the imperfect integrity of Self.
Crucially, how we deal with prior realisations of inconsistency of self-ideation influences how we respond to new realisations of inconsistency, and this can go either way, towards greater stability of self-ideation or towards catastrophic instability. The process can indeed be self-amplifying, but it is fundamentally governed by the laws of sense, insofar as we can discern them and apply them to our conception of the world and with the idea of Self being embedded in it.
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/theory-of-reflexive-consciousness
Substack
Theory of Reflexive Consciousness
I understand reflexive consciousness as the capacity to identify thoughts and intentions as belonging to a temporally continuous, singular identity, and to be able to have thoughts and realise intentions with respect to that identity, including its thoughts…
The desire to dominate is an unsophisticated and self-defeating expression of the intrinsic aim of conscious agency: perfection of agency.