Nancy Chase2If our physical manifestation—our actual shape, all our movements and actions—isn't actually "us," then what's going on if there's only one single reality?
How are we anything other than the sum of our physical faces and actions if there's just one thing existing?
How does a runner realize they have the ability to run, if running itself isn't the runner?
Solid questions. Looks like you actually paid attention to my previous posts.
Our physical form and every single physical action we take are ONE. You can't separate an action from the person doing it. But our PERCEPTION of ourselves—and how we perceive all those physical and mental actions—is a different story. We use different methods to know things.
We experience ourselves as the "doer" through non-sensory means, deep inside us (as a "thing-in-itself"). What we find that way is our inner core, our CONSCIOUS SELF. That's the entity driving and causing everything we do. This kind of knowing is called "self-knowledge." This specific type of internal realization—where we experience ourselves within ourselves—is something known only to us and absolutely nobody else.
On the flip side, we experience our actions through our senses, as our outward reality. Anyone can observe those actions through their senses; they are public knowledge.
The problem—the mistake we make when chasing the "Truth" with a capital T—is that we lean too heavily on our senses. We rely on empirical science, treating it like it's all-powerful, but all it does is let us observe the external side of things. We end up seeing space only as a series of actions and consequences, while the actual cause and driver behind those actions remains a total mystery. For the "Truth" with a capital T, that simply doesn't cut it. You need a method to uncover the internal reality of the world and space itself—to understand space as a "thing-in-itself." We need to know what space actually is deep down, rather than just how it appears to some observer looking at it from the outside.
Take science (physics), for example. It's long since been established that "the movement of matter is self-movement." But that's just a statement—a sensory observation of dry facts. You can't call that the "Truth" with a capital T. It lacks the explanation needed to answer the real questions: how is it possible that matter moves by itself, what exactly is inside it that makes it move, and what even *is* matter, or why does it exist at all? You aren't going to get answers to those using empirical methods alone, because the question is about what matter is in its essence, as a "thing-in-itself."
How are we, as a "thing-in-itself," supposed to discover and learn this ability within ourselves?
I've already touched on this in my last two or three posts.
First off, it’s worth noting that Descartes figured out a long time ago which method a person can actually use to prove the existence of their own CONSCIOUS SELF as a "thing-in-itself."
It's possible through the physical and mental actions that our conscious self has the CAPACITY to perform. One of those actions is thinking. That's exactly why Descartes could tell himself, "I think, therefore I am," effectively proving his conscious self exists within him.
Our conscious self, as a "thing-in-itself," possesses seven distinct physical and mental abilities. They are:
exertion, movement, perception, feeling, memory, thought, and understanding.
These abilities of the self are more than enough for our self to exist entirely on its own—eternally, without any outside help, not even divine intervention—acting as both its own cause and its own effect. No person on Earth should have any trouble discovering, proving, or realizing these abilities within themselves.
But what about discovering, proving, and actually grasping how all that "stuff" outside of us even exists? Does the material, physical world we can touch—and everything it’s made of—possess those same faculties humans have? And does it exist independently, just like we do, through those same actions and abilities?
Answering this isn't rocket science. You just need to look at matter and space through a scientific, empirical lens. We have to determine if matter and the universe, much like humans, engage in acts of tension, movement, perception, sensation, memory, and reasoning. If we find they do, then it’s proof they hold those same capacities required to exist independently, just like people. Because if we establish that these actions "exist"—meaning they play out as physical and psychological processes—then it proves the CAPABILITIES to perform them exist, along with an actor who wields those abilities as the cause of it all. At the end of the day, humans aren't some special exception to the rest of the stuff making up space; we're built from the exact same building blocks. So, if a human has the tools to exist on their own, why wouldn't the universe?
Modern science already shows us that what we call energy or matter has the capacity to carry out all seven of these physical and mental actions—actions like
tension, movement, perception, sensation, memory, thought, and reasoning (if that weren't true, our computers and all the tech based on electronics wouldn't even function), and there's really no need to prove it further. Therefore, it's a known fact that matter and space possess these same capabilities and exist as "things in themselves," just like we do.
And that would be it—the "Truth with a capital T." A truth rooted in experience, easy to prove, and completely logical and understandable.
It becomes especially easy to wrap your head around when you use your own experience of existing—your self-preservation and your sense of self—to analyze the link between physical and mental actions. That's when you easily uncover the LAW by which this SELF-PRESERVATION eternally unfolds. But hey, that's a whole other conversation.
