MIND AND SENSE

Mind is not what you see, but how you interpret what is seen.

Sense impressions do not constitute mind, or the Self, but are means whereby sense can be made of what is sensed, thereby allowing for meaningful interpretation by mind.

Would things, objects, etc., continue to exist if there was no mind to witness and, in an almost literal sense, make some sense of them?

This question is, of course, not new to philosophy, and can be confidently answered by concurring with those who maintain that they would not exist as intelligible objects, but only as meaningless things-in-themselves, which is to say as objects without meaningful purpose or significance.

What had been a chair to my mind would continue to exist if mind was not there to confirm it, though not as a 'chair', but rather as a meaningless thing-in-itself.

Without mind to fashion, interpret, recognise, remember, analyse, etc., the world as we know it would quickly cease to exist.  What was meaningfully existing in it now would become meaninglessly existential, and therefore devoid of significance.

But the withdrawal of all human mind from the world would not necessarily exclude other interpretations of existence - animal, fish, bird, etc., from continuing to lend non-human meaning to things or at least to those things which fall within their natural habitat or environment.  Even nature has some degree of sentient capability built-in to it which gives an even more restricted meaning to certain things, and so on, down to the merest microbe or atom.

Therefore whilst mind is not confined to human beings, it can certainly be said that human mind is more evolved than animal or natural or subatomic kinds of mind, much of which does not even attain to consciousness, much less interpret what is sensed via sense organs.

Yet even human mind is destined to be overhauled, I am confident, by a superhuman order of mind which will find its meaning solely within the Self, rather than in relation to objects.  Such an order of mind could only be described as divine, and the product, I contend, of cyborgistic overhaul of what is organic and, in a kind of Nietzschean sense, human-all-too-human.

Just as human mind contrasts with what, in nature, is unconscious (because sensuous), so the superconscious order of mind will contrast with what, in supernature, is subconscious (because supersensuous), and therefore merely existentially sentient. It will maximize Being, as that which transcends mere organic sentience.

No longer will it be enough to be consciously opposed to a sensuous disposition.  It will be necessary to be superconsciously opposed to a supersensuous one, in order that Being may triumph not simply over Doing, but also, both directly and indirectly, over giving and taking as well.  For that which is conscious (and unsensuous) is much more disposed to taking than to Being, and unfortunately its continued existence is only possible on the basis of a pact with Doing for the mutual exploitation of giving, as to that which, being predominantly sensuous, is only too disposed to a deference to supersensuousness ... nature without reproductive end.