truth with a capital t:
i am careless. i am a destroyer.
but i am also honest, caring, & hedonistic.
i make mistakes.
i am mortal.
i am a tree & i will grow despite the smog.
despite the sun.
so will you.
no one is.
only ONE is.
the only thing we ever know to be true is that we are perceiving what we are perceiving. nothing else.
try to debate this. i will win.
this thought is 25 years in the making.
i am careless. i am a destroyer.
but i am also honest, caring, & hedonistic.
i make mistakes.
i am mortal.
i am a tree & i will grow despite the smog.
despite the sun.
so will you.
no one is.
only ONE is.
the only thing we ever know to be true is that we are perceiving what we are perceiving. nothing else.
try to debate this. i will win.
this thought is 25 years in the making.
Kierkegaard writes in Philosophical Fragments that nothing comes into existence as a result of necessity. By definition, the necessary "is" always. It cannot, therefore, come into existence, for the things which come into existence go from possibility to actuality, and the possible is never the necessary. Coming into to existence never involves necessity, Kierkegaard argues, for if necessity plays any role in the process of coming into existence, the thing would have already come into existence and remained there, for it is necessary that it "is" so. Kierkegaard therefore concludes that the necessary is a category unto itself, and that the "transition from possibility to actuality takes place with freedom."
...
Actuality never becomes necessary. This is significant because the past retains the same status as that of the future and the present: uncertain when brought before the mind's eye. The fact that the past becomes, after it has existed, an object for consciousness does not make it necessary, for this would mean that the one who apprehends necessarily adds something to that which is apprehended, thus making the presumed object of apprehension never the same as the desired object of apprehension, brought before the mind's eye. The only thing the past loses in becoming the past and not the present is the opportunity to become sense content. That which brings the past into being remains hidden. Neither existence nor recollection yield any real clues as to the how of its coming into being. The conjunction of one past event with another changes nothing insofar as the how of the being of the past is concerned. That something is remembered as coming into existence does not demonstrate the necessity that it come into existence in one way rather than another.
...
Immediate certainty is able to be had of all that which one is both contemporary with and apprehended through the uses of the sense. But such knowledge is certain only insofar as it is concerned with the "what" of that which is apprehended: immediate certainty is lost as soon as one looks to the "how." That an event "is," this information the senses are well equiped to provide. But, if asked how the transition from that which was not to that which is took place, one does herself no good to look to the senses for an answer. If one looks at soldiers fighting a war, one may well be able to tell that the people are fighting, but one could not know why the soldiers choose to stand and fight rather than run. The immediate perception, through the senses, of an event or series of events provides absolutely no knowledge of that which brought it into being.
...but anyways, my thesis was about the nonnecessity of the meaning of the past, and not about science or anything like that. And the more I reread my thesis the more I think I totally disagree with you, but thanks for giving me the opportunity to post part of my boring-ass thesis on the net. Sorry if you actually read it.
[Edited on Apr 12, 2005 6:14PM]