By the way, here's Rebecca on the self. I particularly like the way she describes the bundle theory:

http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/what-is-the-self.html

I was reading about David Hume and found myself appreciating his bundle theory. Not only was he an intellectual atheist, he was also a clever epistemologist. Then I realised that the buddha, who denied the existence of self as an entity in his philosophy, was probably the first bundle theorist. Finally I came across this excerpt from Chandrakirti's Guide To The Middle Way:

'The self is like a cart, which is not other than its parts, not non-other, and does not possess them. It is not within its parts, and its parts are not within it. It is not the mere collection, and it is not the shape.'

Bundle theory points out that no object can be described without mentioning its properties. Try describing an apple without mentioning colour, shape, or form. We are no exception, and, as science demonstrates, no self is found in our bodies. The self is an illusion, not of real essence. We, as selves, don't really exist! Cool! 8-)

Also, what Bertrand Russell proposed, once, as a means to solve consciousness and what matter is:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/28/way-forward-solve-hard-problem-consciousness

You read scientific American? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Being mindful used to be called having your head screwed on, now its a woowoo trip vortex thing :)

I belive meditation is very helpful, However there are some people giving courses with negative intent.

I hared on the BBC about a woman who is on anti psychotic medication '' :roll: '' ever since she did a meditation retreat. lets stop here, ''I am in no way agreeing that meditation could cause any negative effects thats completely ludicrous to me'' But the retreat she went on was with a group of people, and they were all told not to make eye contact with one another, or talk for the full 10 days, fairly fuk#t up if you ask me.

There will always be extremes which the sound people into meditation should warn neophytes about. There are indeed sinister figures out there who claim to be enlightened only to take advantage of believers--yes, I'm talking about financial and sexual exploitation. These false teachers can have terrible meditative recipes, too. For me, Vipassana and a little Dzogchen every now and then works a treat. 8-)

I don't read Scientific American, that link was brought to my attention by someone on the 'Christopher Hitchens Remembrance' Facebook Group. I subscribe to Newscientist and once in a while I read Focus to keep up with what's new and at times looking into scientific papers or recently published books that interest me.

Thanks for your input. ;)

just pulling your leg summ ;)

Summerlander wrote: You can kill me now, deschainXIX!

What means of execution would you prefer, Summerlander? Bullet to the back of the head? Dangling at the end of a rope? I can make it look like a suicide, if you want. :mrgreen:

Summerlander wrote: Well, at least you are aware of how the state of your mind is currently affecting your body. Imagine not being aware of that, not paying attention, until eventually the mind pushes the body to its limits. Dan Harris experienced a few physical symptoms which at the time he did not attribute to anxiety, worry and depression when he checked into a hospital. The coke, the pills and how his competitive mind related to his work as an anchor was affecting his well-being and promoting mindlessness and the identification with a bruised ego. And the fact that he was very sceptical of meditation didn't help, but, luckily for him, he stumbled upon reasonable--and rational!--meditators (some of which had a scientific background.

I can relate to at least two of Dan Harris' afflictions. I take Vyvanse and Prozac, but I think most of my problems with mindlessness result from the nature of my life at the moment. I'm taking seven AP classes, I volunteer at two institutions, I work a part-time job, and I have to figure out how I'm going to afford college, all while trying to continue cultivation of my artistic and intellectual sides. I've been dabbling in metta recently and find it very difficult to stimulate feelings of loving-kindness, much less bathe in them. I'm going to keep at it though and hopefully make progress.

Summerlander wrote: Peterson emphasises that the main thing that Dzogchen teaches is the recognition that the knowing in consciousness is unconditioned by any experience. That is to say, happiness and sadness are two different feelings but both require knowing to exist. This knowing is the same for both, it does not differ, it does not change. I suspect that you are probably thinking right now that 'knowing' seems too delicate a state to be referred to with any certainty, deschainXIX. But is Peterson wrong? This is the concept of rigpa--the empty knowing that's always present no matter the what of experience. In this view, you are not the body, nor the mind, nor the story/marrative, nor the ego (self/I/me) ... you are the knowing. (And what knows is the void filled with the world.)

I like some of the things he was saying, even though he was using this sort of vague, imprecise vocabulary (like "knowing") that's typical of a crowd-pleaser. But when he started talking about reincarnation and the permutation of consciousness through multiple lives, I started losing interest. And when somebody asks him if "the secondary consciousness" is where mediums derive their prescience, he says simply "It makes sense to me"--is there some secular analogue to these things I'm missing?

Also, isn't this "knowing" only a product of the body and mind (which is just the body)? In fact, it's *more *than the product of them--it *is *them. Unless I misunderstand you, rigpa is this ascetic bifurcation of the "knowing" from the mind and body. This seems like the fallacious sarx, soma, pneuma trichotomy. I would say that you're still your mind, which is still your body (your brain and spinal cord together with the vast network that makes up the peripheral nervous system, more precisely), but you've only switched from a state of doing to a state of being, which drastically alters one's perception of things.

Or maybe I'm being too dismissive of your last parenthetical sentence, which is really the most important part here. By achieving rigpa, we are separated from the mind and the body (which, really, is a meaningless distinction if you ask me--but maybe I'm missing something) and acknowledging that we are merely the universe observing itself. We are nothing--a collection of atoms gifted (or burdened, depending on your taste) with consciousness of the universe, of which we are an indelible part. But isn't the mind and the body, too, part of the universe, the objective world? Are you not experiencing the world, are you not knowing, via the body/mind? The void which we undoubtedly are is filled, too, with the body and the mind.

Summerlander wrote: This brings me back to the pristine awareness I was talking about earlier. In Tibetan Buddhism--and by no means do I adhere to any type of veneration of deities but heed only what I find useful in this tradition (call me a cherry-picker)--the phenomenon is referred to as gsal ba or pabhassara citta which translates as 'luminous mind'. (Theravadins also regard it as bhavanga 'the ground of becoming'. This phenomenon, which the Buddha once described as the mind as having a luminous quality which 'is defiled by incoming defilements', isn't an alien concept to me. I have indeed stumbled upon a mental condition can be intuitively described as the mind's natural radiance potentially manifesting--or revealed--during meditation.

The words "luminosity" and "radiance" denote the mind as discharging something outward. What is this discharge? Awareness? What is the meaning of this analogy? It seems to be antithetical to the later comparison of the mind to a mirror, something that merely reflects the radiance of the outside world. Whence come the photons of ontology? :evil:

As you can see, I'm struggling to comprehend this sort of language! :lol:

Summerlander wrote: Our true nature should allow us to be like a mirror that openly reflects the world and how this one stimulates the mind, but never affected by its reflections. Dzogchen meditation (if one can even regard it as meditation) can also involve fixation on something (not distracted, a dark room and silence can help beginners) to help bring about a state of contemplation whereby the mind is seized until empty awareness is realised. Practise this with your eyes open. This is the path to immediate self-liberation.

I'll try it as soon as possible.

seanE wrote: a woowoo trip vortex thing

So much has been said in this forum on the topic of mindfulness, and this is what it all comes down to? Now I'm depressed... :D

Summerlander wrote: There will always be extremes which the sound people into meditation should warn neophytes about. There are indeed sinister figures out there who claim to be enlightened only to take advantage of believers--yes, I'm talking about financial and sexual exploitation. These false teachers can have terrible meditative recipes, too. For me, Vipassana and a little Dzogchen every now and then works a treat.

The trouble is trying to discern who's a charlatan and who's selling the real product.

deschainXIX wrote: What means of execution would you prefer, Summerlander? Bullet to the back of the head? Dangling at the end of a rope? I can make it look like a suicide, if you want. :mrgreen:

Bullet to the back of the head. It's quick and you can't make it look like suicide unless you set the stage to make me look like Jigsaw. And if the police track you down, you can always excogitate a compelling argument for having been enticed into 'euthanising' me after having detected my partial mumbo jumbo affliction. :mrgreen:

deschainXIX wrote: I can relate to at least two of Dan Harris' afflictions. I take Vyvanse and Prozac, but I think most of my problems with mindlessness result from the nature of my life at the moment. I'm taking seven AP classes, I volunteer at two institutions, I work a part-time job, and I have to figure out how I'm going to afford college, all while trying to continue cultivation of my artistic and intellectual sides.

Good luck with your academic endeavours, mate! I hope you exceed on your AP exams and get to where you want to be. Just take it as it comes and execute your plans as best as you can. Even if you don't get there, at least you will know you gave it your best shot and meditation is always available in providing you with a mindful perspective. Dan Harris also has experience in scenarios where things have not gone the way he would have preferred--especially when it comes to moving forward in life--and describes how he felt at the time. 10% Happier really is a book for everyone ... 8-)

By the way, what do you use Vyvanse for? Does it boost your attention, memory and performance? Sorry if I'm not acquainted with medication of this sort but I am curious. Everybody knows Prozac. :|

deschainXIX wrote: I've been dabbling in metta recently and find it very difficult to stimulate feelings of loving-kindness, much less bathe in them. I'm going to keep at it though and hopefully make progress.

Dan Harris also found it difficult and some instructions are found for it in his book. I must say that I haven't really tried it that much. I did feel a little mawkish when I watched a documentary about the shit that took place in Ukraine not long ago. What got me was a scene where the Ukrainian people were fighting for their freedom whilst singing their national anthem during their revolution two years ago. I might as well have been doing metta. :D

deschainXIX wrote: I like some of the things he [Peterson] was saying, even though he was using this sort of vague, imprecise vocabulary (like "knowing") that's typical of a crowd-pleaser. But when he started talking about reincarnation and the permutation of consciousness through multiple lives, I started losing interest. And when somebody asks him if "the secondary consciousness" is where mediums derive their prescience, he says simply "It makes sense to me"--is there some secular analogue to these things I'm missing?

Those are the parts I ignore as they just sound like certainty farts to me; and you are right about the crowd-pleasing element. I think Peterson is coming from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective and tries to reconcile certain unfounded beliefs with the dogma he's so fond of. This is where he goes wrong and where you would rightfully advise him to try a little independent thinking instead of faithfully clinging to the doting discipleship before the cameras; much of the useful content he's espousing would be clarified and made more valuable if he revised it as a freethinker. :geek:

deschainXIX wrote: Also, isn't this "knowing" only a product of the body and mind (which is just the body)? In fact, it's *more *than the product of them--it *is *them. Unless I misunderstand you, rigpa is this ascetic bifurcation of the "knowing" from the mind and body. This seems like the fallacious sarx, soma, pneuma trichotomy. I would say that you're still your mind, which is still your body (your brain and spinal cord together with the vast network that makes up the peripheral nervous system, more precisely), but you've only switched from a state of doing to a state of being, which drastically alters one's perception of things.

You are right. There is no knowing unless there is a living, functional brain, which comes with the rest of the organism. You can even say that without a complex, working organism, there is no awareness; and without any sort of consciousness a mind cannot be said to exist. So it does seem like non-conscious matter--arranged in a certain way--is strictly at the base, undergirding the conscious phenom. But if your body was arranged in a different way--far removed from its living human form as well as any humanoid possibility--there would be no conscious you, or no what it is like to be deschainXIX. (In fact, one needn't conjure such philosophical extremes as everything we know about neuroscience tells us that if your body is dead there is no deschainXIX.)

So perhaps the best way to put it is to say that your deschainXIX identity is a phenomenal by-product of your body (a complex unit of matter with many other identity and non-identity potentials). And given that, in principle, our brains could produce multiple personalities, different dream selves, severe amnesia, and vegetative states etc. if altered, then it is also safe to say that the waking ego that is, in your case, deschainXIX is not the real you. (Because it can fall away while you retain awareness.)

So let's effectively break down this confusion using reasoning that resembles Occam's razor by saying that the core of what we are as observers--the awareness--is the phenomenal counterpart of a particular physical array. And note that this physical array changes its pattern slightly with time but the awareness (forget the mind/various objects of consciousness for a second) cannot be altered, only interrupted (as when we lose consciousness). And we (as empty awareness) cannot be said to be strictly the body (only) because all our cells are replaced every few years. Memory certainly plays a role as the continuation of a particular pattern which changes gradually enough to preserve the idea of a changing (maturing) deschainXIX; and the cerebral consolidation, or gestalt, which is doubly preserved must be responsible for the phenomenon of consciousness (with all its connections and switches)--which, as Sam Harris points out, despite coming in different degrees, is clearly irreducible. (You are either conscious or you're not.) :ugeek:

So ... what are we, really? (And before answering this question, define the 'we' that you are referring to.) All of a sudden, saying that we are the universe aware of itself doesn't seem to be enough. When and where do we stop our enquiry? Will we ever be satisfied with our attempts to answer the question? Will our definitions be good enough? The 'illumination' of consciousness is only a poetic attempt to describe that which we still don't yet understand. It bears no relevance to physical radiation or an energy of any sort (forget photons). The 'luminous' quality description only enters the equation in the sense that awareness sheds light on (again, don't take it literally) a small portion of the contents of the mind. (Most of the mind is in darkness or, as we tend to say, the unconscious.) Qualia--whatever their illusory nature--appear in awareness, but I would also contend that this one can be experienced in its naked formlessness, and it is an ineffable stillness free of the mental noise and the 'weight' of thoughts. In saying this, I am not claiming this liberating experience to be some sort of afterlife for we should remind ourselves that it is still a living perspective and possibly just a radically different conception (the mental concept of what it is like to be nonconceptuality) for all I know. I still maintain that, when we're dead, we are most likely unconscious and we cease to be forever. (Forget reincarnation: the ex materia observer phenomenon gets eternal 'nirvana' in nihil--cessation is simply the natural regression to the pre-birth state, the non-state.) :idea:

deschainXIX wrote: But isn't the mind and the body, too, part of the universe, the objective world? Are you not experiencing the world, are you not knowing, via the body/mind? The void which we undoubtedly are is filled, too, with the body and the mind.

Then perhaps we don't really exist as an observer, we only think we do (or the body thinks it), or it seems that way. The 'software' doesn't exist in the way that we think it does, it is merely an illusory symptom begotten by the relationship the body has with its environment. What really exists is the intrinsically dead universe, our most fundamental physical core. Perhaps nothing is an impossible manifestation that our minds inevitably devised. (All of a sudden, Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained ostensibly rings true!) :o

deschainXIX wrote: It seems to be antithetical to the later comparison of the mind to a mirror, something that merely reflects the radiance of the outside world. Whence come the photons of ontology? :evil:

You're right. I seem to have missed the oxymoron there. I think the mirror analogy is the most accurate. And I would further append that the mirror does not last forever. The mirror breaks when the body breaks. The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground. If the foot is destroyed there is no feeling. If the ground is destroyed there is no feeling. If both are destroyed, there is nothing. :!:

deschainXIX wrote: As you can see, I'm struggling to comprehend this sort of language! :lol:

I'm struggling to understand the whole thing. If anything, I'm only trying to make sense of it in my head. :D

deschainXIX wrote:

Summerlander wrote: There will always be extremes which the sound people into meditation should warn neophytes about. There are indeed sinister figures out there who claim to be enlightened only to take advantage of believers--yes, I'm talking about financial and sexual exploitation. These false teachers can have terrible meditative recipes, too. For me, Vipassana and a little Dzogchen every now and then works a treat.

The trouble is trying to discern who's a charlatan and who's selling the real product.

Exactly. I'd heed Mark Epstein; John Kabat-Zinn; Sharon Salzberg; Joseph Goldstein; Dan Harris; and last but certainly not least, Sam Harris. Eckhart Tolle is also useful in describing the mental condition but he is partial to a little woo woo (or he lacks scientific understanding) which is why I advise those who are thinking about reading his books to separate the wheat from the chaff. (But I wouldn't say the man is being dishonest, just, erm ... a little deluded.) :mrgreen:

What is true and what is false? I'm suddenly imagining a debate scenario where the theme is, 'Does God Exist?' The atheist vehemently asserts that there is no evidence whatsoever and plenty suggesting godlessness. He may even reason that the God of the Bible is fictitious, man-made and certainly a character devoid of morality and therefore unworthy of worship. To his surprise, the opposition says, 'That God? We are not talking about that one! We know He's false. We are talking about mathematics, which is an observable fundamental in the world--things come in numbers ...' To which the atheist might retort, 'And you call that,"God"?' And the opposition responds: 'It's an undeniable and beautiful truth which gives us a sense of the numinous, we worship it, and we advocate its worship to others as it helps to preserve the cherished idea that there is a god who is everywhere ...' :mrgreen:

@Enra Traz:

You made it sound like there is no atheistic comeback after the opposition had explained its idiosyncratic definition of 'God'. Refined and obscurantist believers said:

The God-worshipping opposition sympathiser, more like, wrote: *'It's an undeniable and beautiful truth which gives us a sense of the numinous, we worship it, and we advocate its worship to others as it helps to preserve the cherished idea that there is a god who is everywhere ...' *

... to which the atheist responds in turn by saying that the opposition is justifying a delusion with another. Maths is maths, not 'God'. One blurs the lines by altering the original definition here. You can appreciate maths for what it is but it's not something sentient, intelligent and judgemental as a reality in the world; as an active concept in our minds, it is intelligent as long as someone has knowledge or is aware of it. Or more precisely to make sure reason doesn't get lost in translation, maths in our brains sharpens intelligence. 8-)

@deschainXIX:

Are you familiar with Derek Parfit and have you read Waking Up by Sam Harris? I'm only asking to see if I can save myself from having to explain a profound extract from Sam's disquisition on the mystery of consciousness which makes use of Parfit's thought experiment. The philosophy behind it should spin your brain. :twisted:

Here's a shocking truth:

Some people think that anything goes when discussing theology and metaphysics in particular. Coherence can be lost and obscurantism is often used to formulate specious arguments whether one is aware of this or not. The most beleaguering urge during discussions of any kind is the desire to win arguments by any means necessary--preferably by being right rather than pretending or seeming to be so.

Some people say it's human nature; I'd say it's an atavistic side or undesired aspect which tends to be quite prevalent in our species and in tandem with the meme that it's a duty to save face or to preserve a sense of dignity after a faux pas or misdeed. This irrational aspect--which is tied to the urge to repair a bruised ego and preserve it--must be acknowledged so that we can move on as a form of rectification as we strive to be as rational as possible. :geek:

Summerlander wrote: By the way, what do you use Vyvanse for? Does it boost your attention, memory and performance? Sorry if I'm not acquainted with medication of this sort but I am curious. Everybody knows Prozac.

I'm not prescribed it or anything. And I know I don't suffer from any sort of attention deficit disorder. I occasionally take it if I need to enter a state of hyper-concentration (like studying for a Physics exam all night long); it also helps with my writing, social life (it gives me some pep and makes me outgoing), and depression. Definitely a very unhealthy behavior, and I only do it on occasion. You're actually not supposed to regularly take Vyvanse if you're on a monoamine oxidase inhibitor like Prozac, so most of the time I only take it once or twice a month. :P

Summerlander wrote: Dan Harris also found it difficult and some instructions are found for it in his book. I must say that I haven't really tried it that much. I did feel a little mawkish when I watched a documentary about the shit that took place in Ukraine not long ago. What got me was a scene where the Ukrainian people were fighting for their freedom whilst singing their national anthem during their revolution two years ago. I might as well have been doing metta.

Listening to a guided metta meditation can feel a bit New-Agey, and there are definitely obvious problems with unconditional, absolute love for all sentient beings. I can see some people raising an eyebrow at the idea of expanding universal loving-kindness to those who don't deserve it. It isn't hard to envision scenarios where a victim should forgive and even love his or her oppressor, but punitive instinct is a natural, even necessary function that evolved to maintain moral balance. We feel anger for a reason, and there are places for it. But some things are beyond our control, and universal acceptance can feel very good. :|

Summerlander wrote: So perhaps the best way to put it is to say that your deschainXIX identity is a phenomenal by-product of your body (a complex unit of matter with many other identity and non-identity potentials). And given that, in principle, our brains could produce multiple personalities, different dream selves, severe amnesia, and vegetative states etc. if altered, then it is also safe to say that the waking ego that is, in your case, deschainXIX is not the real you. (Because it can fall away while you retain awareness.)

And since I am an indelible participant in my body's experience of the world, this idea of rigpa, which would allow someone to in theory endure the most painful torture without wishing for anything to be different, ultimately means the annihilation of myself as an observer doesn't it (observer seems like the best way to think of myself, so far)? To extricate myself from my body is to extricate myself from my entire existence.

Summerlander wrote: So let's effectively break down this confusion using reasoning that resembles Occam's razor by saying that the core of what we are as observers--the awareness--is the phenomenal counterpart of a particular physical array. And note that this physical array changes its pattern slightly with time but the awareness (forget the mind/various objects of consciousness for a second) cannot be altered, only interrupted (as when we lose consciousness). And we (as empty awareness) cannot be said to be strictly the body (only) because all our cells are replaced every few years. Memory certainly plays a role as the continuation of a particular pattern which changes gradually enough to preserve the idea of a changing (maturing) deschainXIX; and the cerebral consolidation, or gestalt, which is doubly preserved must be responsible for the phenomenon of consciousness (with all its connections and switches)--which, as Sam Harris points out, despite coming in different degrees, is clearly irreducible. (You are either conscious or you're not.)

Is this concept an alternative to or a corollary of anatta? This physical array sounds familiar to some of the points I was raising when we were arguing over whether or not the ego exists. As the moment approaches the infinitesimally precise, the idea of a self becomes increasingly apparent, like tuning in the lens of microscope--in other words, I am a momentary orchestra of particles which is constantly in flux; thus, I do exist, but I am so transient and ephemeral that I am, for all intents and purposes, a construct. I'm a snapshot in time.

But I think this downplays the fluctuation of the awareness. The awareness can be altered and pretty easily, too. Bonking your head your desk is enough to permanently change your awareness. What happens to the body (including the traffic of atoms over the years) affects the nature of your awareness. If you eat more healthily, your mind will literally be sharper and more in-tune with the world.

Summerlander wrote: So ... what are we, really? (And before answering this question, define the 'we' that you are referring to.) All of a sudden, saying that we are the universe aware of itself doesn't seem to be enough. When and where do we stop our enquiry? Will we ever be satisfied with our attempts to answer the question? Will our definitions be good enough? The 'illumination' of consciousness is only a poetic attempt to describe that which we still don't yet understand. It bears no relevance to physical radiation or an energy of any sort (forget photons). The 'luminous' quality description only enters the equation in the sense that awareness sheds light on (again, don't take it literally) a small portion of the contents of the mind. (Most of the mind is in darkness or, as we tend to say, the unconscious.) Qualia--whatever their illusory nature--appear in awareness, but I would also contend that this one can be experienced in its naked formlessness, and it is an ineffable stillness free of the mental noise and the 'weight' of thoughts. In saying this, I am not claiming this liberating experience to be some sort of afterlife for we should remind ourselves that it is still a living perspective and possibly just a radically different conception (the mental concept of what it is like to be nonconceptuality) for all I know. I still maintain that, when we're dead, we are most likely unconscious and we cease to be forever. (Forget reincarnation: the ex materia observer phenomenon gets eternal 'nirvana' in nihil--cessation is simply the natural regression to the pre-birth state, the non-state.)

I agree. This is the closest consciousness can get to experiencing the world as formless. A truly formless world, however, would simply be nothingness. That which exists must by necessity be a form. The only way to see unbiased formlessness is to blow your brains out. No matter how impassive and unbiased you entrain your mind to be, you will still be seeing the world in a certain, subjective way that is a result of your anatomy.

Enra Traz wrote: What is true and what is false? I'm suddenly imagining a debate scenario where the theme is, 'Does God Exist?' The atheist vehemently asserts that there is no evidence whatsoever and plenty suggesting godlessness. He may even reason that the God of the Bible is fictitious, man-made and certainly a character devoid of morality and therefore unworthy of worship. To his surprise, the opposition says, 'That God? We are not talking about that one! We know He's false. We are talking about mathematics, which is an observable fundamental in the world--things come in numbers ...' To which the atheist might retort, 'And you call that,"God"?' And the opposition responds: 'It's an undeniable and beautiful truth which gives us a sense of the numinous, we worship it, and we advocate its worship to others as it helps to preserve the cherished idea that there is a god who is everywhere ...'

There are brinks beyond which our anthropoid mathematics break down. What happens to our equations beyond the event horizon of a black hole? Or if you calculate backward all the way to the moment of the Big Bang? Everything goes wonky, like we've just put on a pair of drunk goggles. Models of the world created with symbols--this is what math is, at bottom--can only take us so far (or have only taken us so far) because we are still inevitably experiencing the world as what we are. The world's mere existence is dependent on the observer (and I'm not using the word "existence" in its intuitive meaning).

That being said, a mathematician who spends her entire life sitting alone in a windowless room learning and reveling in the mathematical neatness of physical laws, running calculations and forming a numerical model of the universe, can be said to know more about "the world" than the most connected, in-touch socialite who travels all over the planet, sampling cultures and tasting the variety of human experience. If you want to understand the world in a genuinely qualitative way, you have to understand math. How's that for a paradox?

The divinity of a Newtonian maxim like

F=ma

isn't absolute because there's obviously more to it than that and there are conditions under which this law doesn't apply. Mathematics has limitations like anything else.

Math isn't itself a god. But it *is *the language of gods. (All right, I think we need to make a new rule: NO POETRY. This is getting a little too painful. :mrgreen: )

Summerlander wrote: Are you familiar with Derek Parfit and have you read Waking Up by Sam Harris? I'm only asking to see if I can save myself from having to explain a profound extract from Sam's disquisition on the mystery of consciousness which makes use of Parfit's thought experiment. The philosophy behind it should spin your brain.

No and no. I can read about it on my own if you want, to save you the trouble of explaining it to me. I think I'm going to read *Waking Up *once I've finished Dawkins, because it probably won't take long. And I can familiarize myself with Parfit if you know of any pertinent sources of information on the internet.

Enra Traz wrote: Some people think that anything goes when discussing theology and metaphysics in particular. Coherence can be lost and obscurantism is often used to formulate specious arguments whether one is aware of this or not. The most beleaguering urge during discussions of any kind is the desire to win arguments by any means necessary--preferably by being right rather than pretending or seeming to be so.

Some people say it's human nature; I'd say it's an atavistic side or undesired aspect which tends to be quite prevalent in our species and in tandem with the meme that it's a duty to save face or to preserve a sense of dignity after a faux pas or misdeed. This irrational aspect--which is tied to the urge to repair a bruised ego and preserve it--must be acknowledged so that we can move on as a form of rectification as we strive to be as rational as possible.

I think if there should be any rules as far as what goes in a discussion, it is that all participants must have a genuine interest in discerning the truth. When we argue, we are not trying to prove ourselves right and the other wrong, we are searching our opponent for reasoning that refutes our argument and/or providing reasoning that refutes theirs. Truth is not extolled; it is demonstrated.

Probably the best way to reduce "ego damage" is to extract all emotion from serious discussions--aside from the joy of those "aha!" moments, which should be shared by all sides of the argument if they are truly worthy of an "aha!" Once people take things personally, there's no point in continuing the conversation. :)

I will address your beautifully rich post when I have more time, but, for now, I found this about Parfit on personal identity:

*'Parfit is singular in his meticulously rigorous and almost mathematical investigations into personal identity. In some cases, Parfit uses many examples seemingly inspired by Star Trek and other science fiction, such as the teletransporter, to explore our intuitions about our identity. He is a reductionist, believing that since there is no adequate criterion of personal identity, people do not exist apart from their components. Parfit argues that reality can be fully described impersonally: there need not be a determinate answer to the question "Will I continue to exist?" We could know all the facts about a person's continued existence and not be able to say whether the person has survived. He concludes that we are mistaken in assuming that personal identity is what matters in survival; what matters is rather Relation R: psychological connectedness (namely, of memory and character) and continuity (overlapping chains of strong connectedness).

'On Parfit's account, individuals are nothing more than brains and bodies, but identity cannot be reduced to either. (Parfit concedes that his theories rarely conflict with rival Reductionist theories in everyday life, and that the two are only brought to blows by the introduction of extraordinary examples, but he defends the use of such examples on the grounds that they arouse strong intuitions in many of us.) Identity is not as determinate as we often suppose it is, but instead such determinacy arises mainly from the way we talk. People exist in the same way that nations or clubs exist.

'A key Parfitian question is: given the choice between surviving without psychological continuity and connectedness (Relation R) and dying but preserving R through someone else's future existence, which would you choose? Parfit argues the latter is preferable.

'Parfit describes his loss of belief in a separate self as liberating:

'My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness... [However] When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.'*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit

You are right about truth as something to be demonstrated, deschainXIX. And I love the poetry, by the way! There is no crime in using the word 'gods' in a poetic sense. Einstein did it and we know what he meant. Even if his usage of the word God was misleading to many a layman, it is our duty to explain and clarify. ;-)

Vyvanse and Prozac

I trust that you are responsibly using these substances as opposed to abusing them to your detriment. To me, the excellence of your cognitive abilities, rationality and intellect is evident in your posts. You must be doing something right if you never had a proclivity for olympian intelligence to begin with. 8-)

Metta and Free Will

The logic that the idea of free will is absurd--and inconsistent with what is observed to be true through experiments like that of Benjamin Libet--seems to me to promote compassion for all sentient beings (including psychopaths, as they, too, are victims of their circumstances). Metta is an efficacious practice designed to promote loving kindness. Couple this with the acknowledgement that reality has a deterministic character and you have the perfect recipe for understanding your archenemies and accepting their nature; this can in turn open effectual doors in dealing with difficult situations and helping to bring the best outcome possible for all parties.

I don't think you have to like your enemies during metta. The main thing is to accept that there is a reason behind their nature--seen as a natural plight whose origins may or may not be clear and with a possible solution--and remembering that our sense of control is ultimately an illusion. This can radically change the way we normally view unpleasant people and metta won't feel so forced or fake. Dan Harris found metta repulsively saccharine and otiose ab initio. Eventually he came round--especially when he discovered scientific evidence suggesting that caring about others is satisfying, self-serving and life-extending. As you said, 'universal acceptance can feel very good.' And it's important to remember that accepting what is and recognising that certain things are indeed beyond our control does not mean we should foreswear action plans altogether; there is still room for proactive behaviour as taking the reins is still a form of pragmatic creativity. (Determinism is not fatalism.)

Rigpa

I have never experienced the contemplation of qualia from the egoless vantage during torture. I have only experienced an apparently naked awareness in a deeply relaxed state and on another mindful occasion I could make the comparably milder pain of having a tattoo done more bearable than it would have otherwise been. I was more accepting of the pain because I was somewhat intrigued by its quality in my mindful state as I had consciously shifted my perspective of the situation from victimisation to examination. As Goldstein once put it, 'It's not what happens that matters, it's how one relates to it.' But how far can we push this philosophy? (One is compelled to ask given the extreme scenario of torture as an example!) Well, if there is a mind in the world resilient enough to not wish for a different setting in such terrible predicament, kudos to him or her. Such minds have truly reached nirvana because such is the state whereby the subject isn't moved or affected by anything. Their happiness springs only from a 'still' mind--an unassailable equanimity which does not preclude the quale of extreme pain at all; but their enlightenment enables them to be comfortable with whatever their minds produce--and somehow 'excruciating' loses its meaning if it's overshadowed by the shocking truth: the experience is not happening to anyone in mental narratives, it's just allowed to be.

There is another way to cease suffering, though, but we can way for this one to inevitably happen: death. :idea:

To be simplistic, rigpa is what I referred to earlier as 'pristine awareness'. In even plainer terms, just awareness. We can be aware of mental contents (including ego) whilst acknowledging that, albeit obnubilated, Buddha-nature 'the awakened state' is already present. Anatta is specifically about the momentary or permanent dissipation of the self or ego regardless of conceptions being present (but not egocentrically personal, of course) or absent. So my guess is that rigpa and anatta are not exactly the same but they certainly interrelate.

We could say that the rigpa vantage, as distinguished from the 'grasping mind', is liberation; this automatically transforms the observer into observing as you are free of all conceptions as opposed to being shackled by them--anatta here is an inevitable corollary. But suppose that you tackle the ego first because it's a major conception; this is a significant step of mental 'web' extrication. The concomitant realisation is the following: mental events are not happening to anyone in particular or they are not the identity; rigpa comes to the fore as a consequence. Herein lies nirvana according to the Buddhist teachings. I wouldn't worry about the labels, though. The main thing to remember is that some sort of profound equanimity, however ephemeral it usually tends to be, is available to us and can be accessed through Vipassana and Dzogchen. Mindful meditation is already guaranteed to alter your living perspective and can potentially make you a lot happier in the long run. The less you see the world based on likes and dislikes the more at peace you will be with yourself. :)

The Temporal Snapshot Self Revisited

It's an interesting view but I would add that the idea of a permanent 'stable and unchanging' self in flux is an illusion which is particularly vivid from the self standpoint. The 'I' indeed exists, but I just like to make it clear that it is not a soul and it isn't eternal. The perception of fixed identity of the entity breaks down the minute we see that the 'snapshots' are never the same in succession. If you looked at an individual's entire life, supposing the self could be seen, the initial snapshot of it would be quite different from the final (ante mortem). Like evolution! You don't notice the process of change from the narrow perspective of the snapshot selves. Selves are like sentient inhabitants of galaxies. Living in a galaxy gives you the impression that you are the centre of the universe as everything is observed to be moving away from you. But no matter where you are in the universe, you will observe the same phenomenon--Hubble's Law--that the universe expands in all directions everywhere.

By the way, I have some input regarding the alteration of awareness and the 'bonking head' example: As I said before, forget mental contents or objects of consciousness (whether they are sharper, fainter, well defined or fuzzy); consciousness comes in various degrees of intensity--it can be strong or weak--but you are either aware or you're not (regardless of intensity or vagueness of qualia). One can be aware of being focused and having peppiness or feeling drunk and groggy, but the awareness is the same despite the difference in experiences. You catch my drift? Perhaps 'knowing' really is a better term. You know you're focused. You know you're drunk. If you don't know what you're feeling or doing, like delta sleepwalkers, you are not aware--you're unconscious.

I hope I haven't misconstrued your argument in any way, deschainXIX. If I have, please correct me where I've gone wrong. :geek:

Derek Parfit and Personal Identification

The human mind can be literally divided with a knife. Have you heard of the peculiar effects of callosotomies--the severing of commissures connecting both brain hemispheres (once used as a treatment for conditions like severe epilepsy)? Once a living brain is dissected via the corpus callosum, both hemispheres become independent centres of awareness. You get two minds in one body! Moreover, they often disagree with each other in opinion, beliefs, and control of the body. It has even been reported that some split-brain patients possess one God-fearing religious hemisphere in contrast to a neighbouring atheistic one! According to some religions, one half of the brain should be going to heaven while the other one goes to hell... :mrgreen:

Sam Harris mentions another scientifically observed phenomenon in Waking Up: binocular rivalry. And after mentioning what it entails in healthy brains, the neuroscientist points out something quite profound about consciousness. Imagine that each of your eyes are visually stimulated in different ways. One is shown a house, and the other, a face. Intuitively, you would expect to see a blending of images--or a superposition of both--in consciousness. But this is not the case. Rather, you see the house for a few seconds, then the face, then back to the house, and so on ... Surprised at this switching at random intervals? The input remains constant, and yet, conscious and unconscious components of vision continuously change as they occur in the brain. While you are conscious of one image, you become unconscious of the other. But wait! I haven't mentioned the greater mystery yet ...

The subjects experiencing binocular rivalry are conscious throughout the experiment! This implies that consciousness runs deeper than just being aware of sensory stimuli. Now, if you were to take away all the senses, surely, a 'naked' awareness would remain, wouldn't it? :|

It seems that two different sets of visual data arrive in the brain but they are delivered one at a time interval (never simultaneously) to consciousness. And while we can say that when the individual is conscious of the house he is unconscious of the face and vice versa, we must acknowledge that consciousness is present throughout. At no point does the individual become unconscious.

Now, it could be argued--against the implication that consciousness runs deeper--that while we are aware of seeing the house (in its prominent appearance in consciousness), we also see the face. But because the house perhaps had more of an impact on the neurons, we forget that we saw the face, too. Subsequently, as the brain is aware that there is another stimulus to take into consideration, it removes the house (as it had enough conscious exposure) and introduces the face into visual awareness. Indeed memory and consciousness interrelate. Now, this is just a hypothetical explanation. I don't know why the binocular rivalry should be. Perhaps the brain hemispheres wrestle even when they are attached to each other as one prefers the face while the other prefers the house.

This is redolent of something else. Split-brain patients can draw two different things at the same time with ease: the left hand can draw a dog while the right draws a person. People with their brains intact, like you and me, will find this exercise next to impossible as one hand will tend to copy the other.

Here is an interesting quote from Sam Harris:

'The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand -- that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character in this moment -- is a mystery, exceeded only by the mystery that there should be something rather than nothing in the first place. Although science may ultimately show us how to truly maximise human well-being, it may still fail to dispel the fundamental mystery of our being itself. That doesn't leave much scope for conventional religious beliefs, but it does offer a deep foundation for a contemplative life. Many truths about ourselves will be discovered in consciousness directly or not discovered at all.'

And then there is the riddle of the self which philosopher Derek Parfit once emphasised in the following thought experiment:

Imagine a teleportation device that can beam people from Earth to Mars. All you need to do is go inside a chamber, press a green button, and presto you're there (or so you've heard). Before you go in the chamber for the first time, technicians tell you that all the information in your brain and body will be sent to a similar station on Mars, where you will be reassembled down to the last atom. Several of your friends have already done it and they message you from Mars, telling you that they're fine and describe the experience as being one of instantaneous relocation: 'Don't worry! You push the green button and find yourself standing on Mars--where your most recent memory is of pushing the button on Earth and wondering if anything would happen!'

So you decide to teleport to Mars. However, as you make arrangements with the technicians, you come across a troubling fact about the mechanics of teleportation: It turns out that the technicians wait for a person's replica to be built on Mars before obliterating his original body on Earth. The benefit of this is that it leaves nothing to chance; if the process of replication goes wrong, no harm has been done. However, the troubling factor is quite clear:

While your double begins his day on Mars with all your memories, prejudices and goals intact, you will be standing in the teleportation chamber on Earth, just staring at the green button. Imagine a voice on the intercom congratulating you for arriving safely at your destination and that in a few moments your Earth body will be destroyed. How is this different from getting killed?

And yet, consider that the same arrangement of atoms that begets your sense of self and identity would be walking on Mars and believing himself to be you. You may think that the replica is nothing but a deluded perfect clone, but then consider the fact that all your cells have been replaced many times during your lifetime. You may remember having been six-years-old but the truth is that that little boy is long gone and the new cells have merely inherited memories. This gives rise to the illusion of a continued self. We must also consider the fact that individuals with extreme dementia are not psychologically continuous with whom they used to be--and yet, they hold the same neurons that gradually succumb to the disease. In their case, a new set of neurons compatible with continued consciousness could restore their once healthy psyche...

What is the self then? What does it rely on? Could it be that, in Parfit's thought experiment, we die on Earth but suddenly find ourselves conscious on Mars? Or do we die and the replica on Mars is nothing but a replicated self but with a fundamental difference of location in the fabric of space? :shock:

Summerlander wrote: I trust that you are responsibly using these substances as opposed to abusing them to your detriment. To me, the excellence of your cognitive abilities, rationality and intellect is evident in your posts. You must be doing something right if you never had a proclivity for olympian intelligence to begin with.

I’m blushing. Actually I’ve noticed that Vyvanse makes me less intelligent. Anyway, it’s irrelevant. I'm going off Prozac soon and will probably cease Vyvanse consumption. The way I see it, the poisons which I choose to imbibe are my own business (and problem, if they become ones). :D

Summerlander wrote: The logic that the idea of free will is absurd--and inconsistent with what is observed to be true through experiments like that of Benjamin Libet--seems to me to promote compassion for all sentient beings (including psychopaths, as they, too, are victims of their circumstances). Metta is an efficacious practice designed to promote loving kindness. Couple this with the acknowledgement that reality has a deterministic character and you have the perfect recipe for understanding your archenemies and accepting their nature; this can in turn open effectual doors in dealing with difficult situations and helping to bring the best outcome possible for all parties.

I don't think you have to like your enemies during metta. The main thing is to accept that there is a reason behind their nature--seen as a natural plight whose origins may or may not be clear and with a possible solution--and remembering that our sense of control is ultimately an illusion. This can radically change the way we normally view unpleasant people and metta won't feel so forced or fake. Dan Harris found metta repulsively saccharine and otiose ab initio. Eventually he came round--especially when he discovered scientific evidence suggesting that caring about others is satisfying, self-serving and life-extending. As you said, 'universal acceptance can feel very good.' And it's important to remember that accepting what is and recognising that certain things are indeed beyond our control does not mean we should foreswear action plans altogether; there is still room for proactive behaviour as taking the reins is still a form of pragmatic creativity. (Determinism is not fatalism.)

That’s true. Our form of metta could simply involve the acknowledgement that all suffer and all experience happiness, yet, trapped as we are within the causal machine of the cosmos, none bear moral responsibility (except for socially-constructed responsibility) for our actions.

Summerlander wrote: I have never experienced the contemplation of qualia from the egoless vantage during torture. I have only experienced an apparently naked awareness in a deeply relaxed state and on another mindful occasion I could make the comparably milder pain of having a tattoo done more bearable than it would have otherwise been. I was more accepting of the pain because I was somewhat intrigued by its quality in my mindful state as I had consciously shifted my perspective of the situation from victimisation to examination. As Goldstein once put it, 'It's not what happens that matters, it's how one relates to it.' But how far can we push this philosophy? (One is compelled to ask given the extreme scenario of torture as an example!) Well, if there is a mind in the world resilient enough to not wish for a different setting in such terrible predicament, kudos to him or her. Such minds have truly reached nirvana because such is the state whereby the subject isn't moved or affected by anything. Their happiness springs only from a 'still' mind--an unassailable equanimity which does not preclude the quale of extreme pain at all; but their enlightenment enables them to be comfortable with whatever their minds produce--and somehow 'excruciating' loses its meaning if it's overshadowed by the shocking truth: the experience is not happening to anyone in mental narratives, it's just allowed to be.

I’m thinking of the Buddhist protesters who, with utter serenity, set themselves on fire. Also, there is the proverbial monk living the life of hyper-asceticism in a cave. Hunger, true hunger (which I, as a Westerner, have never experienced and cannot even imagine) is excruciating and absolutely could be considered torturous. Yet you could offer these buddhas a three course meal and they would refuse, electing to remain in the state of passive observation, of witnessing the impermanence of qualia. These are just the popular examples, and I’m sure they abound beyond my knowledge.

All your other points about rigpa are excellent and I concur totally.

Summerlander wrote: By the way, I have some input regarding the alteration of awareness and the 'bonking head' example: As I said before, forget mental contents or objects of consciousness (whether they are sharper, fainter, well defined or fuzzy); consciousness comes in various degrees of intensity--it can be strong or weak--but you are either aware or you're not (regardless of intensity or vagueness of qualia). One can be aware of being focused and having peppiness or feeling drunk and groggy, but the awareness is the same despite the difference in experiences. You catch my drift? Perhaps 'knowing' really is a better term. You know you're focused. You know you're drunk. If you don't know what you're feeling or doing, like delta sleepwalkers, you are not aware--you're unconscious.

I see. But this definition of awareness can be extrapolated to mean that awareness is independent of objective reality. Even if you’re hallucinating, you’re still “aware” if you take note of the things you’re seeing. This would mean that Buddhistic awareness is far from a philosophical concept. Is that correct?

Summerlander wrote: It's an interesting view but I would add that the idea of a permanent 'stable and unchanging' self in flux is an illusion which is particularly vivid from the self standpoint. The 'I' indeed exists, but I just like to make it clear that it is not a soul and it isn't eternal. The perception of fixed identity of the entity breaks down the minute we see that the 'snapshots' are never the same in succession. If you looked at an individual's entire life, supposing the self could be seen, the initial snapshot of it would be quite different from the final (ante mortem). Like evolution! You don't notice the process of change from the narrow perspective of the snapshot selves. Selves are like sentient inhabitants of galaxies. Living in a galaxy gives you the impression that you are the centre of the universe as everything is observed to be moving away from you. But no matter where you are in the universe, you will observe the same phenomenon--Hubble's Law--that the universe expands in all directions everywhere.

Did I hear "evolution"? Time for a tangent! Here’s a nice piece from Professor Dawkins. It’s probably my favorite point he’s made so far in The Ancestor’s Tale, but it’s also pertinent to the topic of nonconceptuality, the “squishiness” of reality, the absence of objectivity, and the like.

In this part of the book, Dawkins is doing his usual fantastic job of rending intuitions which lead us to false conclusions. He says that biology differentiates one species from another by determining whether or not two individuals can reproduce--if they can’t, they’re of a different species--something everyone knows. But he explains why this is nonsensical and just a mode of thinking which has no serious mapping on the objective world. During the evolution from one “species” into another, there is no definitive moment when one species emerges from another. Rather there is a continuous chain of individuals, each of whom could mate with his or her parents of the opposite sex. At no point does a child spontaneously emerge who is unable to reproduce with individuals of the previous generation and thus draw the line between this species and that.

Dawkins says that it’s sort of like heating up a kettle of tea. There is no singular moment when the water switches from “cold” to “warm.” Rather, there is a spectrum of Fahrenheit or Celsius. So it is with speciation. Dawkins says that scientists and biologists who think entirely in speciesist terms labor beneath “the tyranny of the discontinuous mind.” He gives it a different name later, and this is where my ears perked up:

“*Ernst Mayr, distinguished elder statesman of twentieth-century evolution, has blamed the delusion of discontinuity--under its philosophical name of Essentialism--as the main reason why evolutionary understanding came so late in human history. Plato, whose philosophy can be seen as the inspiration for Essentialism, believed that actual things are imperfect versions of an ideal archetype of their kind. Hanging somewhere in ideal space is an essential, perfect rabbit, which bears the same relation to a real rabbit as a mathematician’s perfect circle bears to a circle drawn in the dust. To this day, many people are deeply imbued with the idea that sheep are sheep and goats are goats, and no species every gave rise to another because to do so they’d have to change their ‘essence’.

There is no such thing as essence.*”

Dawkins’ juxtaposition of the Essentialist’s fallacy with mathematics is more than coincidental. Mathematis is true essence--because it is a concept. A perfect circle isn’t something we found in the real world. Pi is an irrational number, continuing on into infinity in precision. The circle is an ideation. But, when building circular objects, we can get so close to that ideal that, for our functional purposes, it is a perfect circle. And when considering two sexually incompatible organisms from the perspective of anthropoid (rather than geological) time, they can be considered two different species, even though, if you go back far enough into the aether of prehistory, they share common ancestors who were sexually compatible.

I like using the word “Definitivism” better, but Essentialism is (essentially) the same concept. We draw lines around things and assign undue identity upon objects in order to quickly understand the world around us. Math is a way of making sense of the world in a real and tangible way.

It’s true, we’re not really “seeing” the world; my retina is collecting photons colliding with it, deducing that the light must have bounced off something (or originated from something hot) and that an object is there, and constructing a model within the mind that, for all intents and purposes, accurately “represents” the outside world. (Dennett would have my head for accidentally wandering into the Cartesian theater as I just did.) But, just as with the circle, we are not experiencing even subjective analogues of objective truths. To go farther, it is impossible to “perceive” the essential world at all. Such an action is axiomatically impossible, because the essential world does not exist. (Note that this must not be construed by creationists like Z0rb in “Lucid Dreamers and God” that there is no such thing as truth. Quite the opposite.)

There is no essential Summerlander or deschainXIX. It’s almost becoming a cliché, but let’s say it again because it’s such a beautifully counterintuitive truth: the substance of our bodies is in flux, our cells replacing themselves constantly, shedding old atoms and assimilating new ones. What, after metabolism, endures? Conception. Ego. So it is with objects: they possess no essence but for our anthropoid purposes, they can be said to do so.

The reasons for this are analogous to Dawkins’ continuity/discontinuity, which is not only a biological principle but also a metaphysical one. This is the ontology of perpetual flux--which, indeed, fits in with Buddhist ideology if I’m not mistaken. The ontology of perpetual flux somewhat resembles Nietzsche’s cosmology, which he called eternal recurrence. His writing on the subject profoundly demonstrates the imagination and contemplative wonder with which the secular rationalist thinks about the world. Once again, we’re getting into the realm of philosophy and poetry (or perhaps we’ve been there for quite a while), and I don’t entirely understand or agree with what Nietzsche has to say here:

*[I will post Nietzsche’s ravings about the eternally recurring cosmos tomorrow, when I can retrieve them from my local library. I couldn’t find the pertinent quote on the internet, strangely enough.] *

When you export these ideas to existentialism--Sartre and Nietzsche--we realize that, since nothing exists in the traditional sense, we are truly free. To define ourselves, to define our lives, to define our values. We can almost see a consistent teleology to these realizations: the ultimate liberation of the mind.

Summerlander wrote: Sam Harris mentions another scientifically observed phenomenon in Waking Up: binocular rivalry. And after mentioning what it entails in healthy brains, the neuroscientist points out something quite profound about consciousness. Imagine that each of your eyes are visually stimulated in different ways. One is shown a house, and the other, a face. Intuitively, you would expect to see a blending of images--or a superposition of both--in consciousness. But this is not the case. Rather, you see the house for a few seconds, then the face, then back to the house, and so on ... Surprised at this switching at random intervals? The input remains constant, and yet, conscious and unconscious components of vision continuously change as they occur in the brain. While you are conscious of one image, you become unconscious of the other. But wait! I haven't mentioned the greater mystery yet ...

I’d heard of callosotomy (I heard once that you can actually remove one hemisphere of the brain in an infant and the empty space will be filled up with cerebrospinal fluid to maintain weight balance, but otherwise the child will grow up to enjoy a normal mental life--not sure if this is true or not), but not binocular rivalry. Binocular rivalry is fascinating because it seems to be in paradox to the human ability of optic depth perception. My brain has to simultaneously consider data from both of my eyes in order to calculate the distances of objects from my head using the simple geometric principle of triangulation. But here it seems to only consider data from one or the other at a single time. Or perhaps it's just all about memory, as you say.

This recalls Dennett's Stalinesque or Orwellian revision of the stream of consciousness (which I admit I didn't fully understand on my first swoop through his book). When you flit your eyes from one object to another, your mind "deletes" the memory of the blurred visual data collected between the time your eyes went from leaping from one object to settling on another.

Maybe the same thing is happening here: our consciousness *does *experience data from one eye and then the other all the time, except that the memory of discontinuous switching has been "deleted" and replaced with a smooth, continuous narrative of qualia.

Summerlander wrote: While your double begins his day on Mars with all your memories, prejudices and goals intact, you will be standing in the teleportation chamber on Earth, just staring at the green button. Imagine a voice on the intercom congratulating you for arriving safely at your destination and that in a few moments your Earth body will be destroyed. How is this different from getting killed?

I understand and appreciate the principle being related by the ticklish thought experiment, but I have problems--ones that probably come from my ignorance of science. Atomic rearrangement on another planet wouldn’t be enough to completely duplicate who you are. Right?

Consciousness might be predicated upon electronic patterns moving through vast branches of neurons. One would have to literally record the movement of electrons about the nuclei of atoms in Sodium-Potassium systems and other complicated gadgetry and arrange for the ones on Mars to begin at exactly where they left off in order to propitiate the illusion of teleportation to Mars. And yet--it is impossible to predict the motion of electrons as they zip around in clouds of obscurity, according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Add other quantum quandaries which I cannot relate and things continue to break down.

Perhaps, though, this doesn’t matter. The principle remains. It could, though, lend some credibility to the idea that "your identity is unique and unreplicable."

Wow. A lot of excellent points and interesting information. I'm glad you're enjoying Dawkins. Summerlander will have to address your post when he's free ... to be Manson. :mrgreen:

Yeah, what drugs is that zorb on. :-D

I wrote: "Such an action is axiomatically impossible, because the essential world does not exist."

I know that the usual retort is, "Yes, bats and humans perceive the world differently, but they're just experiencing the same basic thing in different ways."

But, to quote Inception, we have to go deeper (than that)! :mrgreen:

In other words, the essential world is something us sentient beings made up in order to make sense of the sensory databut primarily (or initially) to survive. Am I right? :-)

Here's Nietzsche, a bit late, but here nonetheless for his platform.

From Will to Power

...utterly without aim, unless there is aim in the bliss of a circle...

This is the sort of thing that makes me want to devote my life to theoretical cosmology. I have no reason other than an intuitive resonance within myself, to do so, but I've elected to use this model for thinking about the world. It's just so interesting!

Enra Traz wrote: In other words, the essential world is something us sentient beings made up in order to make sense of the sensory databut primarily (or initially) to survive. Am I right?

I think that's far too simplistic a sketch, but it's the basic thesis.

Of course, some consider Nietzsche to have been totally crazy his entire life, rather than just toward the end, and that's understandable. Maybe he was.

Omni-quote deschainXIX strikes again:

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not been said by one philosopher or another. DESCARTES

Asceticism

Siddhartha Gautama himself dabbled in asceticism (as the story goes). But the prince came to realise that there is no need for extremism in realising the truth that, as Sam Harris puts it in his guided meditation, 'that which is aware of sadness is not actually sad.' The Buddha put his body in harm's way and nearly died because of it when it would suffice to realise the truth that would bring him closer to enlightenment by simply employing subtlety in his methods. Using meditation to train the mind to focus and ground one in the present moment--with all emergent sensations--is enough. As the illustrious stringed instrument analogy in Buddhism conveys, there is indeed a harmony to be realised. I think monks who set themselves on fire did so unnecessarily. (And usually to make a political point or a display of courage and strength.)

'Buddhistic Awareness'

I think the underlying awareness--the one whose 'objects' or qualia are mere perturbations of it--is still begotten by objective reality. There must be a signature in the physical world which permits the transmutation of objects into subjects. According to neuroscientists like Christof Koch, consciousness can be measured in phi. This makes me think that there is a spectrum, much like the gradualness in Darwinian evolution, ranging from unconsciousness to full awareness (as much as the living physical mass permits as naturally dictated by neurology and the relevant activity in space-time). Along this postulated spectrum, we cannot pinpoint a defining stage where one state can be said to be conscious while its subsequent spectral neighbour is not. (But according to binocular rivalry, we can experientially ascertain that sensory input is introduced to consciousness 'selectively'.)

Having said all this, we must consider the counterargument that saying consciousness, in its purest 'form', is a by-product of complex physical systems is nothing but an epistemic assertion begotten by the phenomenon of experience. We merely perceive a strong suggestion that the physical world is responsible for instances of subjectivity based on the phenomenal models of reality in our noggins; and it is also important to remind ourselves that we can only ascertain the presence of consciousness insofar as it can be experienced. (I can be sure of mine but can only guess when it comes to others. A scientist must regard reports of consciousness by subjects as possible indications only.)

Darwinian Evolution, Species, Dawkins Literature

deschainXIX wrote: At no point does a child spontaneously emerge who is unable to reproduce with individuals of the previous generation and thus draw the line between this species and that.

I think Dawkins also mentions this in simpler terms for children (and layman adults alike) in The Magic of Reality. I read it to my kids and they loved it. In particular my eldest who was dumbstricken at the fact that four hundred and seventeen million years ago his 185-million-greats-grandfather was a fish. You should have seen the look on his face. It was like he had experienced real magic ... indeed the magic of reality! 8-)

deschainXIX wrote: Dawkins says that it’s sort of like heating up a kettle of tea. There is no singular moment when the water switches from “cold” to “warm.” Rather, there is a spectrum of Fahrenheit or Celsius. So it is with speciation. Dawkins says that scientists and biologists who think entirely in speciesist terms labor beneath “the tyranny of the discontinuous mind.”

Hmmm ... maybe Dawkins is into beastiality. Just kidding! :mrgreen:

deschainXIX wrote: “Ernst Mayr, distinguished elder statesman of twentieth-century evolution, has blamed the delusion of discontinuity--under its philosophical name of Essentialism--as the main reason why evolutionary understanding came so late in human history. Plato, whose philosophy can be seen as the inspiration for Essentialism, believed that actual things are imperfect versions of an ideal archetype of their kind. Hanging somewhere in ideal space is an essential, perfect rabbit, which bears the same relation to a real rabbit as a mathematician’s perfect circle bears to a circle drawn in the dust. To this day, many people are deeply imbued with the idea that sheep are sheep and goats are goats, and no species every gave rise to another because to do so they’d have to change their ‘essence’.

Mayr is also mentioned in The Magic of Reality. He made a good point. Plato's belief strikes me as a fallacious blend of metaphysics and teleology.

deschainXIX wrote: There is no such thing as essence.

This is undeniable when we take into consideration your Dawkinsian argument. :shock:

deschainXIX wrote: Dawkins’ juxtaposition of the Essentialist’s fallacy with mathematics is more than coincidental. Mathematis is true essence--because it is a concept. A perfect circle isn’t something we found in the real world. Pi is an irrational number, continuing on into infinity in precision. The circle is an ideation. But, when building circular objects, we can get so close to that ideal that, for our functional purposes, it is a perfect circle. And when considering two sexually incompatible organisms from the perspective of anthropoid (rather than geological) time, they can be considered two different species, even though, if you go back far enough into the aether of prehistory, they share common ancestors who were sexually compatible.

Absolutely. Anyone who doubts this today is a nitwit. :geek:

The Mind and Non-essentialism

deschainXIX wrote: It’s true, we’re not really “seeing” the world; my retina is collecting photons colliding with it, deducing that the light must have bounced off something (or originated from something hot) and that an object is there, and constructing a model within the mind that, for all intents and purposes, accurately “represents” the outside world. (Dennett would have my head for accidentally wandering into the Cartesian theater as I just did.) But, just as with the circle, we are not experiencing even subjective analogues of objective truths. To go farther, it is impossible to “perceive” the essential world at all. Such an action is axiomatically impossible, because the essential world does not exist. (Note that this must not be construed by creationists like Z0rb in “Lucid Dreamers and God” that there is no such thing as truth. Quite the opposite.)

I gathered you didn't put it in a Z0rbian way, anyway. :mrgreen:

deschainXIX wrote: There is no essential Summerlander or deschainXIX. It’s almost becoming a cliché, but let’s say it again because it’s such a beautifully counterintuitive truth: the substance of our bodies is in flux, our cells replacing themselves constantly, shedding old atoms and assimilating new ones. What, after metabolism, endures? Conception. Ego. So it is with objects: they possess no essence but for our anthropoid purposes, they can be said to do so.

And this is what puzzles me about Parfit's thought experiment. If I say the original deschainXIX is disassembled on Earth and subsequently assembled on Mars (note the order in which this happens), you would imagine that you would be conscious of being on Earth one moment and on Mars the next. (No different, I'm assuming, than remembering having been deschainXIX seven years ago even though the deschainXIX of today is totally different in terms of cellular make.) But saying that your replica is put together first on the red planet and then a voice announces that you are about to be destroyed on Earth prompts you to think that the replica on Mars is not the real you and death is imminent. And yet, the Martian deschainXIX would swear the teleportation was successful and would feel just like you (and have the same memories).

Either identities are unique to physical systems or they require a continuity ... or ... my brain is spinning already ... :? we are all the same awareness but viewing from different perspectives as 'bent' by physical systems that idiosyncratically produce user illusions or selves. Could awareness be this deep? :idea:

deschainXIX wrote: The reasons for this are analogous to Dawkins’ continuity/discontinuity, which is not only a biological principle but also a metaphysical one. This is the ontology of perpetual flux--which, indeed, fits in with Buddhist ideology if I’m not mistaken. The ontology of perpetual flux somewhat resembles Nietzsche’s cosmology, which he called eternal recurrence. His writing on the subject profoundly demonstrates the imagination and contemplative wonder with which the secular rationalist thinks about the world. Once again, we’re getting into the realm of philosophy and poetry (or perhaps we’ve been there for quite a while), and I don’t entirely understand or agree with what Nietzsche has to say here:

[I will post Nietzsche’s ravings about the eternally recurring cosmos tomorrow, when I can retrieve them from my local library. I couldn’t find the pertinent quote on the internet, strangely enough.]

I will have to review what you posted on Nietzsche more carefully when I have time. I am excited! 8-)

deschainXIX wrote: When you export these ideas to existentialism--Sartre and Nietzsche--we realize that, since nothing exists in the traditional sense, we are truly free. To define ourselves, to define our lives, to define our values. We can almost see a consistent teleology to these realizations: the ultimate liberation of the mind.

But even this teleology is contrived by us as an ultimate purpose in tandem with the potential as happens to be allowed by reality. It is important to point out to our readers here that this ultimate liberation of the mind is something that we, as sentient beings, would want to do and recognise as an intrinsic freedom--not something that a personal god had in mind for us or that a universe that is somehow alive decided to create us for a specific purpose. Sorry, I know you know this shit but I just feel like mentioning it because certain individuals have quoted what we have said out of context. :idea: :mrgreen:

I remember that deep discussion we had which made me ponder about the possible relevance of the Casimir effect. This effect applies to the quantum and we've tested it. We've also tested what happens between two objects separated by many metres but connected by a string or rope; classical Earthly distances have a different effect. But we've never tested this circumstance in a light-years-long arena. Perhaps a different effect would be observed---one that would contradict our assumptions ...

Would the loosening effect from cutting the string be intantaneous and light observation a latent confirmation---as one would intuitively expect---or would the physical reverberations have to cover the distance closer to sound speed and thus light winning the race?

What do you think would happen now, Hagart? Have you developed any new opinions about that thought experiment since? :geek:

By the way, take a look at the 'Slinky Answer' experiment (and check out its extension too):

https://youtu.be/eCMmmEEyOO0

Here's some feedback from a friend of mine at TOEpedia regarding the light-year-long rope thought experiment and the slinky:

'I think the same principle should hold. The most important thing I think is to really take timescale anthropocentrism into account. I don't think of the speed of light as an actual speed, it's more of a constant ratio between time and space. On the scale of a light year, one human year is instantaneous, just as a femtosecond is instantaneous in our frame of perception. Light is a sense experience, as is the 'information' received by the bottom of a slinky or the furious activity of Wile E. Coyote's feet as he hangs motionless off the edge of a cliff. There is a feeling of tension or release. I think that our whole notions of photons and EM fields is inside out.'

~Craig Weinberg

No, I can't add more to it. I still think of that thought experiment alot however.

I am literally speechless, but full of thought about it. It's a great mental puzzle and we need to realize that all of light we see is from stars is in the past and there is no present and all of life is an illusion.

I'll write a book about it someday if I can gather my thoughts, but for now, I can only say we are on the same page.

It will be a difficult book to write. I'd rather sit down and drink beer. :mrgreen:

Just out of curiosity, what would you call the book?

I doubt I'll write it, so there is no need to have a title. I'd rather just drink beer and be happy in this crazy universe that doesn't make sense.

Cheers!

Amen! :D

The quality of experience itself changes with the passage of time, but knowing remains knowing. It never changes because it is the tabula rasa of awareness. It's the knowing of this, it's the knowing of that ... it's all knowing! There is no knowing of knowing because knowing is already knowing ... In order to become aware of awareness itself, you cannot identify with your ego. :-D

All I can claim to know is the mental appearance of qualia including a sense of self. In other words, I can only be sure of the existence of my own experience which, strangely enough, persuades me to have a theory of mind and to not be a solipsist. I have to behave as though there really is an objective world populated by other minds because I have no choice; it would seem too absurd to behave as though this world is solely my creation, or a simulation of 'the real', in some 'brain in a vat' scenario.

I think thoughts are phenomenal illusions generated by physical events in the brain. Can I trust this when it is also a thought about thoughts. Well, probably not, but, what else is there to go on? Do I deny my understanding of reality according to what's resonated with me?

This is an interesting video ... 8-) https://youtu.be/IHcOvPtYE08

I thought I'd share an interesting excerpt from a book called The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object by a mystic who hijacked the neurophysiological term 'introception' to describe the kind of experiential transcendence we've all been discussing here. Some of his New Age ideas are cringe-worthy, but I found the following particularly eye-catching. Have a read and tell me what you think:

*'The Event came after retiring. I became aware of a deepening effect in consciousness that presently acquired or manifested a dominant affective quality. It was a state of utter Satisfaction. But here there enters a strange and almost weird feature. Language, considered as standing in a representative relationship to something other than the terms of the language, ceased to have any validity at this level of consciousness. In a sense, the words and that which they mean are interblended in a kind of identity. Abstract ideas cease to be artificial derivatives from a particularized experience, but are transformed into a sort of universal substantiality. The relative theories of knowledge simply do not apply at this level. So “Satisfaction” and the state of satisfaction possess a substantial and largely inexpressible identity. Further, this “Satisfaction,” along with its substantiality, possesses a universal character. It is the value of all possible satisfactions at once and yet like a “thick” substance interpenetrating everywhere. I know how weird this effort at formulation must sound, but unless I abandon the attempt to interpret, I must constrain language to serve a purpose quite outside normal usage. This state of “Satisfaction” is a kind of integration of all previous values. It is the culminating fulfilment of all desires and thus renders the desire-tension, as such, impossible. One can desire only when there is in some sense a lack, an incompleteness, which needs to be fulfilled, or a sensed goal that remains to be attained. When in every conceivable or felt sense all is attained, desire simply has to drop out. The result is a profound balance in consciousness, a state of thorough repose with no drawing or inclining in any direction. Hence, in the sum total, such a state is passive. Now, while this state is, in one sense, an integration of previous values, it also proved preliminary to a still deeper state. Gradually the “Satisfaction” faded into the background and by insensible gradation became transformed into a state of “Indifference.” For while satisfaction carries the fullness of active affective and conative value, indifference is really affective-conative silence. It is the superior terminus of the affective-conative mode of human consciousness. There is another kind of indifference where this mode of consciousness has bogged down into a kind of death. This is to be found in deeply depressed states of human consciousness. The “High Indifference,” however, is the superior or opposite pole beyond which motivation and feeling in the familiar human sense cannot reach. But, most emphatically, it is not a state of reduced life or consciousness. On the contrary, it is both life and consciousness of an order of superiority quite beyond imagination. The concepts of relative consciousness simply cannot bound it. In one sense, it is a terminal state, but at the same time, in another sense, it is initial. Everything can be predicated of it so long as the predication is not privative, for in the privative sense nothing can be predicated of it. It is at once rest and action, and the same may be said with respect to all other polar qualities. I know of only one concept which would suggest its noetic value as a whole, and this is the concept of “Equilibrium,” yet even this is a concession to the needs of relative thinking. It is both the culmination and beginning of all possibilities.

'The reader must have patience with these unusual combinations of conceptions if he would acquire any understanding at all. There is no word-combination that is strictly true to the meaning intended, and so the common medium is strained to suggest a most uncommon content. In any case, there is mystery enough in the relation of idea to its referent, even in ordinary usage. Habit has caused most of us to neglect this mystery, but it has led to the production of many volumes out of the minds of philosophers.

'When to wish for is to have immediately, it is impossible to isolate desire from possession. The awareness of desire necessarily vanishes. Ordinarily we desire and achieve the object only imperfectly after much effort. Thus we are highly conscious of desire. If there were absolutely no barrier to complete fulfillment, there could be no more consciousness of desiring.'*

~Franklin Merrell-Wolff