Categories or Degrees of Existence (Agnosticism)

by Tim , Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 02:48 (5246 days ago) @ dhw

Wow. I wrote this very nice reply to you, and then hit Send (in reply mode), as if it were a personal e-m, without hitting the link to bring me to this forum. Sorry if I seem a shade late; I was awaiting a response from you.-1. EXISTENCE is subjectively relative, on two levels: True/Relevant(?) and False/Irrelevant(?). Existence, then, becomes similar to the "I'm OK, You're Ok" quadrant, in the book by the same name. In Functional Reality, the objective and subjective constantly merge, diverge, merge and diverge, ad infinitum. I was forced to liken it to a water-level with two cross-hairs; Where that bubble wanders, within our psychology/ies, IS "reality" (for that moment, period, era, eon....)-Example: I know that my car exists, in my driveway. I just looked out the window, and, as I type, I KNOW it is there. Yet, if I sell my car, I still know that it exists, but that someone else is driving it. The same can be said of my ex-wife!!!!!!) So, although both exist, in my mind, their relevancy is seriously questionable. This is the bubble in the True/IRrelevant square. Now, in the True/RELevant square.....My house is on fire. DOES the fire "exist"? ... YES! It exists and IS extremely relevant.-The True/Relevant category contains things like bills, job, traffic, food, your pets, YOU, your laundry, etc. These are both True AND Relevant, since you have to deal with them daily. These include things in which you mostly have no choice but to make them both true AND relevant, or else you're in trouble.-The False/IRrelevant square contains things like whatever is splattered onto the pages of the magazines you're forced to look at, as you wait to pay for your groceries, movies - anything we manufacture for entertainment, or is not impinging upon your freedom. Whenever you don't care about something, it (might be) irrelevant; Whenever you know something isn't true, it (might be) false. Please notice the question marks, above, behind the names of these categories. This is to indicate that a judgment must be made, to find out where that bubble is, if you care at all.
 
You can mix and match these four qualifiers any way you'd like, except as indicated in the below-following sentence.-Here they are:-True
False
Relevant
Irrelevant-Please notice that they are mutually exclusive polarities! I.e., something CANNOT be both true AND false, nor relevant AND irrelevant, simultaneously, and constitute the cross-hairs of this "psy-levelometer". -2. Our eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and skin are SENSORS for our brains, through which our brains experience their surroundings. The sensors pick up signals from the environment, and send them to the brain; The brains then respond in accordance with one or many essential routines, and (we hope, we try...) to adjust our responses as we go. That is really the whole story about our subjective/objective interaction.-3. MY answer to your question about whether there is or is not an Intelligent Design going on.... -What you are really asking is: How did the complex cell become extant? One might accept the simple cell as inevitable, given evolutionary pressures; But how did the complex cell evolve???? The complex cell seems to need the Intelligent Design argument to resolve the issue.-However, what you might consider is that, in the same way that there evolved a simple cell, out of biological necessity, came the complex cell, given the extant, stable structure of the simple cell. Necessity is the key to understanding this concept.-Think of your own brain, in desperate need. You are hungry, afraid, etc. What happens? The original, basic subsistence cells form-up and interact with one another, chemically/molecularly, to create/devise new relations = ideas/notions, and you think/do things that would otherwise not have been conceivable even moments before the action.-It is the notion of "Intelligence" that needs to be clearly defined before a rational answer can be attained here. "Intelligence" is, now, as we've attempted to understand it, NOT a strictly human attribute, but an attribute intrinsic to "life" itself, as we have come to know it. Life, as we know it, follows a type of logic that is not familiar to our minds, which is why we even question both Intelligence, and Design, and then try to squish them into one seemingly coherent phrase!-Sir, I tell you, clearly - ALL things and developments EVOLVE! Our only problem is in finding, presently, the beginnings of it.-Please tell me your sense of this answer.-t