A stone does not know it is a stone

This seems to be the easiest way to illustrate that what something is, and what we think it is, are different.

This often slips into a Noumenon and Phenomenon distinction. But this is not helpful because Noumenon by definition cannot be known so what is the point.

The point is to recognise that knowing is only part of the picture. And as we will see once we no longer identify with thinking and think this is where we somehow reside then we will no longer desire everything to be known to the thinking mind.

So how do we get around that problem of Noumenon being unknown?

Well knowing can appreciate it is limited. This is Godel's Theorems, or in this blog SRH (or now UIP).

When we put knowing down, the world does not disappear. Whether we recognise a stone as a stone or not makes no difference to the stone.

And for the thinking mind it starts off again and tried to make sense of that boundary. But STOP!

This is no longer an intellectual or mental exercise. It is an "appreciate what is" exercise. This is where Eastern Philosophy can get the enquiring mind into an unnecessarily intricate cat's cradle of mental loops which I will take a wonder through in a moment.

It is perhaps enough to notice our own mental processes. This is an extraordinary thing if we reflect on it. Often we like to think "I think therefore I am," and feel that "I" am embedded in my thinking. Like a detective we imagine ourselves completely wrapped up in the enquiry and the thoughts. This is how we discover things, this is how "I" accumulate knowledge. I will achieve knowledge and become wise and enlightened.

Oddly though we know all this! If I was really embedded in the thoughts, if "I think, therefore I am" was true then we would not know we were thinking! To see our thoughts means we are not our thoughts, we are outside our thoughts watching them happen! We refine Descartes statement to "I can see there are thoughts, therefore I am." Now perhaps Bertrand Russel and others who made this point didn't quite see the singularity that is set up here, and probably what got Descartes excited. Like his "I am doubting" being an impossible statement akin to "This is false", "I am thinking" is itself a thought. It seems in that moment when we acknowledge that "I am thinking" we actually are thinking. It must be true. When we think "I am thinking" we necessarily are thinking. It seems like it proves itself, it seems like a moment that is aware of itself. This was the logical certainty that Descartes was looking for. And there is sense to it as he later appreciates: the world is, the world is the condition for any mental activity, thought or philosophy, for any existence. To be in any philosophical enquiry is already to have assumed the world. There must be thoughts already before we can do philosophy. But where Descartes gets too excited is that "This is true" is not actually saying anything. Likewise "I am thinking" is not a magic spell with mysterious power. It is just words that are thought. Perhaps he was influenced by Judaism and the Middle Eastern god Yahweh which I understand can be translated as "I AM." It seems when we think "I AM" we are referring to our self like staring into a mirror. This is the statement that appears to reveal the kernel of the world in its most distilled form: behind it all is "I." Staring in the mirror and seeing myself I make the connection that I am only there because someone is looking  and that someone is the person in the reflection. The loop closes, the object being seen becomes the solid apparent foundation of the subject who is seeing, and the subject who is seeing becomes the field in which the object can manifest. The loop closes, we have a flash of existence and certainty. It is profound and illuminating, intoxicating.

But as this image below suggests not everything is as it appears. Yes that closing of the loop brings us into the present moment. What Descartes is describing is the bringing his attention into the moment of thought itself into the "Now". Standing in front of the mirror looking at our self and realising that in this moment I am seeing. This is a genuinely truthful experience.  

But then it becomes toxic because within that perfect moment of existence, we have some thoughts. We have an object that we decide is our self, and this appears to reinforce another belief that someone is seeing. Very quickly we take what is there, and we layer over it with thoughts and stories. What was a pure moment of appreciation becomes a cascade of thoughts.

And we should take a moment here to humiliate Judaism and the Occult and many systems of thought that completely miss the point. That image above points out very clearly that the self devouring itself in the mirror--being both the person seen and the person seeing in a loop--is actually being watched from somewhere else. When Descartes is thinking "I think therefore I am" that loop of being both the thought and the thinker is being watched from somewhere else. Godel knows this well: any system that allows for self reference is incomplete and has an outside. Or to turn that around self reference is only possible from outside a system, and so where ever we meet self reference we know already we are outside the self being referred to. It is incomplete. Indeed this was the original insight of SRH that self-reference is a breaking condition, and as a refinement where there is self-reference then self is incomplete. This is SRH or UIP. You cannot know yourself. "I AM" is never the whole story!

Now in Buddhism this is said in simpler terms: all existence is conditioned and depends upon prior existences. Specifically a cause in the right conditions. When we see fire we know somewhere before there was sufficient heat in an environment that could burn. We just know that because fire is not complete: it cannot exist by itself. It needs to be started. And this is true of everything. Sorry Yahweh sorry Self you do not exist by your self. Perhaps this is why Yahweh is so jealous and angry He knows that he has only limited authority and power and must enforce this through fear. Very revealing! But the Devil takes a different approach. Because the moment the devil reveals himself as the mould rotting our lives we take action against him. The Devil must work in disguise in the shadows of what is not seen, hiding behind what seems to be good. The Devil is not fighting to become whole like God, the Devil is celebrating the incompleteness and destruction of the world. Hubris captures this interplay perfectly. The person seeking to become perfect and invincible, self-knowing and complete is making something profoundly fragile and when it cracks it is catastrophic. God is there to remind us to be humble and not seek perfection for our self, and the Devil is there to encourage us into stand tall so we can be broken.

And like everything in this blog a much longer journey than intended brings us back to the point: a stone does not suffer any of these problems. Not having eyes or a brain it cannot stand in front of the mirror and get distracted by all this. It is just a stone. We are not being idealistic here: there are stones! and we know perfectly well there are stones: they make very large mountains for example that take some effort to climb. But a stone cannot know it is a stone, or that it is a mountain or that for instance it has a name Everest of Sagarmatha as it is called in Nepal.

Knowing, thinking, mental activity is something else apart from the things like stones that are known. It takes eyes and a brain to see and know things. Or these days an AI. If stones knew they were stones then why do humans and animals need brains or spend centuries developing technology that can see and know things?

And we need be absolutely clear on this that knowing is not the same as the thing known. In philosophy this is called Non-Identity. But it is not a random result, it is a necessary result. If something could know itself in entirety we have complete self-reference and we know that is a contradiction. We can see that intuitively. Suppose an entity Q has complete self-knowledge and self-reference. It would mean that it would have to know itself, and also be identical with what it knows. It would mean that the "contents" of Q would have to be identical with Q. Q would know nothing else but Q, and Q would be nothing else other than the knowledge of Q. It means two things (1) being complete there is no way for anything "outside" to get into the system of Q to find out what is in there (2) being complete there is no way for Q to know anything else other than itself. In fact there is no difference between Q and a stone. Whether inside the bubble it is secretly knowing itself becomes a meaningless question. Q becomes a "null" entity and that illustrates a thing about knowledge: seemingly ironically: knowledge is always about what we are not. In order for a mirror to reflect it cannot reflect itself, it is always showing the world around itself. You cannot know your self, and if you try the knowledge is always incomplete.

SO when brains realise they are not just stones, and have the ability to know they get into this loop. Knowing knows all about stones like this:

"I know stones" I think. But knowing gets jealous. I want to be solid like a stone, I want to be what I am, firm in an existence. Being the knower of such solid recognised things makes me want to be known myself.

But knowing forgets that a stone does not know that it is a stone. It is knowing that sees the stone. A simple proof of this lies in the picture above. Is it a stone? Well you can throw a stone. Can you throw the thing above? No because it is a picture. And how can a stone get into a blog page anyway? It hasn't! A picture is just some colours in a shape, the "stone" and the "knowledge" of what it is comes from us not from the page in front of you, from my brain and my viewing of the picture. It is actually a very common optical illusion. A few colours in the right shape can trick our brain into thinking we are looking at a stone, when actually we are not. We are so used to this optical illusion we don't think about it any more but it is extraordinary really that we can create what looks like things with just colours on a flat page. And it illustrates perfectly the processes in the brain that produce knowledge. Indeed they do a lot more, they produce consciousness of things like that picture and the world. But we just need focus on knowledge and thinking here.

The brain wants to know about itself. And while it is like a stone, in that it is an organ which we can go see in a medical museum, that is not what the brain wants to know. It wants to know about the knowing that it does! It wants to be able to see knowing in the mirror and point and go that is me. And in there lies the contradiction.

IF our knowing is like a stone we have an infinite loop. Because each step of knowing will create a new stone for us to learn about and off we go down the rabbit hole. Very quickly we have an infinite number of stones.

A stone does not know it is a stone. And importantly the reverse is true: the knowledge it is a stone is not like a stone. That was Plato's mistake with his Forms. 

It means that all the thinking and mental activity our brain does is not there to be known. You cannot know that you know no matter how appealing that is. In the moment of knowing, you are just knowing. Like standing at the mirror, you are not seeing your self, you are just seeing! There are no loops and we cannot establish our existence in what we think or see. You cannot think or experience yourself into existence, because you must already exist in order to have thoughts or experiences.

And this captures the final subtlety.

If what we are is different from what we do then what are we?

What is the thing that is thinking if it is not the thoughts? What is the self that is seeing if it is not what is seen?

Well we are back to the stone. Our true self, the one that does the knowing, is not what is known. and we must leave it there. This is the end of the road of all that activity that seeks to somehow hold ourselves in our own hand. As much as we desire to stand before ourselves, complete the loop, know that we stand as a self contained entity separate from the world and other people. As much as we desire that, it is impossible. It is just Narcissus trying to grasp at his reflection in the water. It is just a disappointing reflection: there is nothing there.

We have to deal with that--possibly depressing at first take--knowledge that there is nothing there. The whole illusion of a fixed separate self that we can carve out and hold is an illusion.

We can see this intuitively.

What is both confusing but also entertaining for the dog chasing its tail is that when it goes to bite the tail the tail moves. What the dog doesn't realise is that being connected to the tail when it moves so does the tail. There is no fixed thing to grasp, and so it is with the self trying to find itself.

And so it was brilliantly with Pooh and his search for a Woozle (a story I liked so much my Dad used to call me Wozzle). The foot prints of the supposed Woozle turn out to be Pooh himself.

And in that we get the flash of self again. Ah that is me making the tracked we think, ah this is my tail the dog realises. We close the loop we have something solid that we think we can grasp.

And Pooh's next stop is not to follow his footprints but to follow his thoughts. Where are those thoughts coming from? Wait that made a new thought. How each time I have thought there is a thought. That created a new one. When I think "I am thinking" that is a new thought. And so the loop closes. Until we realise that it is me making these thoughts, except and this is where it is different from chasing a tail or following ones own footprints: that itself of "me making thoughts" is just a thought. This is not a proof of self, this is a proof that thoughts are not complete. The thought "thought" is not complete. We are back to Q. If the thought "thought" really captured everything about thought it would persist forever, self fulfilling: the dog would catch its tail, Pooh would be a Woozle both creating a foot print and stepping into one at the same time. This does not happen.

And finally we back to stone for a last time. A "thought" itself, not a brain this time, is like a stone. A thought does not know it is a thought. When we say "I am thinking" it is not a thought saying this, because that is the thought. It is broken and incomplete. We are in fact with the "I" acknowledging that thoughts cannot know themselves and we put in the "I" to acknowledge this. But this does not mean that the "I" is somehow standing there looking at this. It is just to say that the "thought" is not able to do this itself. If we do try and understand this as a discrete "I" doing the thinking instead of thought itself, we create a new thought of "I" which needs a new "I" to do that thinking and it is an infinite process with an "I" constantly needing to turn up to do the last thought.

So if we do wish to think about this correctly we need to acknowledge the limits of the thought. Let go of grasping at knowledge and accept that the world happens by itself which includes our thoughts, and our beliefs about being embedded in all this activity. This is all belief and thought. And it happens by itself. The dog stops chasing itself tail, Pooh realises Woozle is him and the chasing is just creating the thing to chase, it is an illusion. You cannot grasp or know yourself. There is just knowing. And we become like the stone at last.

This is the odd thing for the brain trapped in a loop, and encouraged to be trapped in a loop by Western Enlightenment and especially by American and Jewish culture. When it realises that there is no catching up with the Now because it must be already in the Now to even desire to catch up with the Now the whole program evaporates. When we set off to discover our self, who embarks on this journey? That is our self already! There is nothing to do. So even while we are not like a stone and around us a new thing called "knowing" happens this is no more magic than what makes a stone.