Ideas and Discussions

Words shift meaning with context and user—we can never assume shared understanding, especially with abstract or complex terms.

Every idea here could be explored further, with its own history and almost endless details and implications. But I've chosen simplicity.

"Begin at the beginning" sounds logical, but what if there is no beginning? Since I can't locate the true Beginning, I must simply start somewhere.

Question: What fundamentally exists, or what is ultimate reality?

Simple Answer 2: Direct sensory experience, prior to any description or interpretation may be the closest we can come to “connecting” with what is real.

Beyond that we may have “ideas” about what “causes and lays outside” those experiences, but we cannot say what this is or these are for sure. 

Technical Answer 2: Something stable seems to continue outside of our direct experience of it… for example, “The place I return to after many years looked much the same”. We act and something pushes back… “I kick the rock and my foot hurts.” The implication is that “outside our experiences” there is something that persists beyond our experiences of it.

We only experience, perceive and know the world through our experience, perception and knowledge of it. Our memory, imagining and abstract thinking about the world is just re-cycling that experience, perception and knowledge. That is, we can never get outside of our experience of the world, nor can we, by definition, experience that which is outside our experience.

Every idea we have about what “reality” is like outside our experience of it is only ever a metaphor from the world of our experience. Such “imaginings” always subtly presume a perspective. There is no “view from nowhere”. This seems to be an essential limitation of knowledge and experience.