Monthly Archives: October 2021

The “Consciousness is an Illusion” Fallacy

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When it is said that X is an illusion, it is meant that what is perceived as X is really Y. Once the false perception is corrected, we can understand the difference: what we are actually perceiving is different from what we thought we were perceiving.

The correction of the false perception reveals that the perception of X as Y cannot be categorical. Meaning that X cannot always by everyone be perceived as Y, because if everyone always perceives X as Y, then it cannot be known that there is in fact a difference; and thus it cannot be known that X is an illusion. As far as anyone can ever know or say, X is simply X

This is precisely the problem we run into when we posit that consciousness is an illusion. To say that what we perceive as consciousness (the awareness of a singular metaphysical Self) is in reality something else implies that a difference can be known—that the false perception can be corrected. However, since consciousness is a frame of reference for perception, itself, it can never be perceived that consciousness is something else. It can never be perceived that “I” am actually “not I” because the perception of such a distinction requires the frame of reference of “I” in the first place. Put another way, the frame of reference of he who makes the distinction between the illusion and what the illusion actually is cannot itself be the illusion.

A distinction between the “illusion of consciousness” and what consciousness “actually is” is something which no one, anywhere, at any time, can perceive. Thus, any claim regarding such a distinction is necessarily false. Further, I would add that since consciousness necessarily implies choice and will, any claims as to the illusory nature of these things must also be false. Much more could be said of choice and will, of course, but we will leave it for now.

Physical Law Must Be a Product of Consciousness

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I posit this:

Physical law is a cognitive organizational construct; it is conceptual in the purest abstract sense of the word. It possesses no material characteristics; it cannot directly interact with material, empirical reality, but only indirectly as a means by which man conceptually organizes his environment. It therefore has no determinative power to exercise over material, empirical reality.

The assertion that physical law exists outside of the human mind, and possesses utterly non-abstract existent properties, and is thus discovered and observed, and is in essence something empirical, and is of the environment, not of the mind, presents with a number of rationally irreconcilable propositions. Here are just a few:

The determinism.

If physical law determines the actions (and reactions) of objects, what then determines physical law? Physical law is the determinative force. Whatever action it takes in order to effect the inevitable determined object outcome must take place. But if we say that the actions of physical law are not themselves determined then we are saying that those actions do not not necessarily need to take place. Therefore, the object outcome which physical law governs likewise does not necessary need to take place, and thus is not necessarily inevitable, and thus is not necessarily determined. A determinative force, like physical law, would require a determinative force to govern its actions…and so on and so forth…a perpetual regression. Therefore, physical law cannot be determinative, and therefore is not law.

The distinction.

That physical law governs objects presumes a distinction between physical law and those objects. If this is the case, then can we not say that it is the properties of the objects themselves which dictate their behavior and not physical law? But if we argue that these properties are themselves a function of physical law, how can it be said that there is an actual distinction between physical law and the objects it governs? There could be no distinction. Without a distinction there can be nothing for physical law to govern and therefore physical law is not actually law.

The observer.

If the observer is a direct function of physical law then how can he observe it from a distinct frame of reference…a reference which is required in order that observation can actually occur? If there is no such frame of reference, and thus no observation, and thus no observer, then who or what defines physical law as being, in fact, physical law? If there exists no one to declare a thing a thing then to whom or what is that thing relevant? There is no one and nothing. Without relevancy there is no purpose, and if there is no purpose there is no meaning, and without meaning there is no definition, and without definition nothing can be said to exist. If what exists cannot be defined, how can it be said to exist? “What exists?” is a question with no possible answer.

Physical law taken beyond man’s mind is a rational disaster.

Government Managing Your Risk…

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…is predicated on the assumption that you are unable, fundamentally (as in, as a function of your nature as a human individual) to manage it yourself. In other words, government exists to protect man from his intrinsically fallen nature; without the state, man is at the mercy of his root vice and irresistible lust for all things evil (how “evil” is defined is ultimately up to the government, conveniently) eventually leading to a dystopia, then an apocalypse which will drive mankind extinct. Man’s capacity for reason and cooperation is no match for the depraved nature which forms the core of his being.

Government, in short, exists to save man from himself. Now, how the ruling class obtains special dispensation from its own fallen nature—they are human beings, after all—is really just a matter of mysticism, once you remove all of the cluttering doublespeak about “leadership” and “public service” and “free elections” and whatnot. Ultimately it boils down to this: the philosopher kings are granted their political authority (the “legitimacy’ of coercive violent force) by divine decree, given by God, or gods, or even the “laws” of nature, or evolution (e.g. genetic gifted-ness), the “laws” of social science, etc. etc. or a combination of these kinds of things.

There is much more to say about this, but with respect to government risk management, this about sums up the relationship between ruler and ruled.

To wrap it up, the managing of your risk by the philosopher kings of the state inevitably becomes the dictating to you what actually constitutes risk, to what degree something is or is not a risk, what risks are worth the risk, and what risks you will or will not assume whether you like it or not.

Risk management is behavior management, is life management, is the death of the individual, is the death of mankind. Ironic.

Legality and Morality: Completely opposite ethical systems

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We often see law and morality, or legality and morality, as corollary, or interchangeable. However, the category of Value, speaking philosophically, known as Ethics, is not an admixture of morality and legality, but rather may contain either/or, depending on how we define the nature of reality, and from that how we define truth and falsehood (metaphysics and epistemology, respectively), but never both. Because the truth is that Legality and Morality are mutually exclusive ethical paradigms. The former is an ethical structure which exists outside of the individual at the metaphysical level and consequently is something to which the individual must be coerced by an Authority which necessarily disregards his will. The individual’s will comes from inside himself, and the ethical primary, the Law, is outside of him…he is obligated to it, irrespective of his will. That’s why its the Law, you see.

The latter, morality, is an ethical paradigm and system where the individual is the ethical standard, and individuals cooperate—which implies the use of individual will, not its rejection—in service to each other’s success and happiness. A violation of morality is a violation of the individual’s essence…his conceptualizing nature, and thus his will, and from that his choices, and from that his labor and property. Consequence for moral violations can range from a refusal to cooperate with the perpetrator of the violation, up to his destruction or restraint depending on the level of severity. This can be done cooperatively by moral people, and this cooperation does not necessitate or constitute government. Rather, it is a group of individuals who recognize their individual worth and will cooperate with each other in order to protect and promote it.

Much more can be said about morality and its practical application specifically, but I will leave it for now. I will only add that A. Morality is fundamentally a much easier ethic to define, contrary to opinions about morality being categorically subjective (Hume’s guillotine and whatnot), and much less prone the kinds of chaos and confusion and irrationality which lead to things like 2500 page bills being put to a vote in the US Congress whilst giving no conscientious representative any reasonable amount of time to read it. And B. That to reject law is NOT to reject ethics. Lawlessness does not necessarily mean the absence of ethical value. It can, and should, if we are being rational, mean that one rejects ethics via coercion and violence by an authority of the group in favor of ethics via cooperation and mutual appreciation for the individual at the root existential level. In other word, morality is through love of the individual, legality through the hatred of him. If you will permit me a slight irony, morality is the “Law of Love”.

The Law is a collectivist ethic—a set of ethical values that affirm a Collective Ideal (the Nation, the People, the Tribe, the Race, the Socialist Utopia, etc,). Because this Law is collective, the individual is disregarded for the group—conformity to the group is something not intrinsic to the individual’s nature, so he is compelled into it by the authority of the State, which acts as the incarnation of the Collectivist Ideal on earth. When I say “State”, of course, I primarily mean the Government. (For philosophical purposes, the two are usually interchangeable.) When I say “Government”, I mean any individual or set of individuals which claim authority over the group to compel the group by force into “legal obligations”. Authoritative force is corollary to Law; without this force, the law is nothing more than suggestion. “Suggestion” and “Legal Obligation” are about as synonymous as “freedom” and “slavery”, or “life” and “death”. Appeals by the State to an individual’s legal obligations, codified or merely asserted, are often couched in manipulative terms such as “collective good”, or “social contract”, etc. etc.. In realty, there is no such thing as the “collective”. Human beings are metaphysically individual. We have a single and singular conscious frame of reference. We say “I”. The group is nothing more than individuals who share a conceptual framework for reality in language, and in turn, may cooperate to achieve individual ends which, taken in aggregate, may, and usually will, benefit the group of individuals. “Collective responsibility” is an appeal to some esoteric, ethereal, utterly subjective, and utterly abstract “Collective Ideal” which no individual can ever access because their frame of reference, as an individual, is mutually exclusive of it; and yet he must somehow recognize its virtue and sacrifice himself to it. If he does not, he will be sacrificed to it by the Authority. Government officials should more realistically be considered as a mystic priest class, which claims to possess some transcendent knowledge and connection to the divine Ideal which you, the mere pew sitter, cannot possess, because, well..just because. That’s the thing, there is no explanation that you can understand because your very existence precludes this. It’s about faith, you see, not actual understanding.

The idea of a separation between church and state is a noble one, but utterly impossible to achieve. The church is the state; the state is the church. There will never be any other way.