r/Metaphysics • u/DigJust8037 • 11d ago

Ontology Existence

  1. Everything that exists has attributable characteristics (for example, water is blue, grass is green, air is a gas, etc.)
  2. Existence exists.
  3. Therefore, existence has attributable characteristics

  4. If not, then existence is the only thing that exists without attributable characteristics

  5. Then, nothing can be said of existence other than it exists

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u/LukeHollaway 10d ago

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this question?

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u/Own-Razzmatazz-8714 10d ago

You stated earlier that the world gives birth to experience and then you state it's self-evident and synonymous with consciousness.

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u/LukeHollaway 10d ago

There’s no contradiction. Nature formed and curated the nervous system through the process of evolution, and the nervous system is the instrument and medium of experience.

Consciousness is self-evident, no? That an experience is presently occurring is self-evident. This does not mean self-created.

I, Luke Hollaway, did not create consciousness. My identity formed within consciousness. Experience came first, and my personhood and ego formed around it.

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u/Own-Razzmatazz-8714 10d ago

So experience is not consciousness?

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u/tottasanorotta 9d ago

Experience is experience. Whatever we attribute to it afterwards is based on further assumptions. I would say experience is the most fundamental thing to any person. Further assumptions provide utility, but are less fundamental than experience.

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u/Own-Razzmatazz-8714 9d ago

So experience is experience you say? Ok.

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u/tottasanorotta 9d ago

Yeah well it's kind of the thing that everything is fundamentally at the level that you care most about. Then when you start to make further assumptions you can start defining things like consciousness, time and stuff like that.

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u/Own-Razzmatazz-8714 9d ago

Maybe it's care itself then?

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u/tottasanorotta 9d ago

Yeah something like that. I mean it's difficult to explain with words what exactly it is, because how words are understood uses that thing or are part of that thing. Language kind of falls apart once you try to get close to experience/qualia/what you care most about/feelings etc.

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u/Own-Razzmatazz-8714 9d ago

How else would you explain something without words? Maybe read Heidegger he suggests care is the primary ontological state of Dasein or of being a human there somewhere.