8-bit philosophy

[Mystic]

I think that's a dangerous path to go down. You are likely to end up, if not at God, with a philosophical quantity which fulfills the paradox-resolving functions of God. You have to tie a little multi-modal knot, right? As in: The universe was created by God, since only God can be a sufficient reason for creation. But the sufficient reason for God is not another creator, because that would imply an infinite regress. So you have to say God is caused by some divine principle or other mysterious quantity X.

I think in the end, insanity-- or at least an unwillingness to attempt a rational engagement with the PSR-- is the most rational response to infinite regress. We cannot imagine a universe that exists eternally, because if causeless, then we say, "Yeah, but WHY the fuck is it here rather than not?" Or if created, we say, "Where does the infinite regress end? Fucking turtles forever. . . really!?" While people sometimes confidently assert a position, or even mock others who don't "get" it, I'd argue those people lack sufficient imagination to properly wallow in the thorough fucked-up-ed-ness of reality.

That's my answer: agnosticism as a declared position, and "FUUUUUCK!" as a description of the problem as I experience it mentally. PSR kind of just gets thrown into the mix.

Allow me to indulge in some speculative philosophy.

Borrowing from Schopenhauer, whom I find much agreeable in his philosophizing thus far, perhaps the "will," or to use a term of Dostoevsky's, something more appropriately conceived as an "centripetal force," and Kant's Dinge-an-sich, only exists through the "representations" i.e. the material world as subject-object, knower-known, through individuals, ourselves intuitively and intimately understanding this will and coming to recognize it as the volition to act over and against natural stimuli or impulse; yet the representations are contingent on the will as well, as without das Dinge-an-sich there is no space, no time, and hence, no matter. The principle of sufficient reason could only be satisfied by circularity or a sort of reciprocal cause-effect, a struggle that exists in the force between representation and annihilation, Yin and Yang, God and Satan, Good and Evil, Natural Selection, etc. In other words, the objects disappear when the subject dies, for the will only knows itself in each individual (unity) on a spectrum that includes a variety of characters and animal intellects (plurality), and it is through a subject that the will knows, or realizes itself, as representation. The biggest challenge to this, which forces myself to even stop seriously entertaining such a notion, is that it would seem to demand that all events appearing in the collective past, before any knower existed, would only be virtually true, as only in the abstract. And then we're at Plato's Ideas. While I can't disprove it, it feels intuitively wrong, and one or two steps away from solipsism.

So, yeah, FUCK.

What if there were spirits that witnessed the universe expanding and life coming to form? Some sort of demi-gods.