Re: Stack Overflow

From: Chris Thomson (christhomsonshomepage_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/01/04 

Date: 30 Nov 2004 18:08:11 -0800

Keynes <Keynes@earthlinkspam.net> wrote in message news:<mbkpq01r30ego799jtebjof7n3kpqo6v9t@4ax.com>...
> Interesting.
>
> Thinking is the truncated top level of cognition.
> It is a symbolic representation of things not actually
> subject to symbolic simplicity. On the two valued scale
> of 'is' and 'is-not', the actual weight of things is absent.
>
> But thinking rests on the foundation of intuition and pure
> sensations which are the irreducable nature of experience.
> Thought is just a fascinating skeletal superstructure.
>
> Whether we think or whether we don't, things remain the same.
> But what are they? Some say the question is irrelevant.
> We already know more than we think.

It seems like a question worth asking, much of our civilised history
could be seen as influenced by this question, and our persistence in
trying to answer it.

You've got to be careful, though, how you frame it. If there's an
impllied addendum, that leaves the question as "what are things
really; not how we think about them, but independent of ours or
anyone's thoughts about them, what are they really?", then this is,
essentially, an attempt to think outside of your own thoughts. This
leads to the stack-overflow problem I mentioned.

But if we accept certain limits to the *kind* of understanding we can
have, there's virtually no limit to the *amount* that we can have, or
the amount that we can potentially increase our understanding of what
things "really" are.

It's an important distinction because it makes the difference between
a question of "what are things really like?" that is useful to ask,
and possible to find answers for; and an apparently identical question
"what are things really like?", that is a logical dead-end and the
equivalent of trying to think of the highest number (Hint: it's not
there, you won't find it).