IGS Discussion Forums: Learning GS Topics: Why do objects exist?
Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Friday, August 22, 2008 - 11:28 pm Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

I like to reserve the term "object" to refer to Korzybski's object level. When I want to refer to that which presumably was abstracted from - at the event level, I like to use the phrase "putative 'thing'". (Except, of course in "every day" casual communication, when I talk like a naive realist.) Then I can say that I project my object backwards onto a putative "thing". If we are going to carry the consciousness of abstraction into our conversations, we may need to use different terminology. So a putative "thing" I infer has putative "characteristics" that I abstract as object "properties" usually a relation between my conscious apprehension and the object created in my consciousness, most of which, under various forms of realism, I project and assume have some kind (I know not what) of "existence" independenly of my perception.

So, when we take the limit with respect to time-space distance, all we have left is the object we experience, because, in a galaxy far, far away and a long time ago, whatever may have been there has moved out of our light cone to where the physicists call ??elsewhere??. As the fellow said, "Hmmm, You can't get there from here." (now).

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Monday, August 25, 2008 - 01:36 pm Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

Milton,
You wrote "Personally: I believe there are existents that are not conscious me."

Are you saying you believe that there are existents ("things" that exist) that you are not conscious of?
If not, can you paraphrase?

Author: Ralph E. Kenyon, Jr. (diogenes) Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 04:31 pm Link to this messageView profile or send e-mail

My "is" "is" a non-elementatlistic synthesis of 1) "is" of definition, 2) "is" of predication", 3) "is" of existence, 4) "is of attribution, "is" of abstraction, etc., including the "is" of echoing the questioner (not in any priority order). In sume case cases it may even include the auxilary to another verb, such as when one answers "general semantics 'is' doing such and such, or your favorite, behaving in certain ways.