Religion and Ethics Forum
Religion and Ethics Discussion => Philosophy, in all its guises. => Topic started by: Sriram on August 01, 2019, 07:35:39 AM
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Hi everyone,
Here is an article I came across.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_spirituality
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Secular spirituality is the adherence to a spiritual philosophy without adherence to a religion. Secular spirituality emphasizes the personal growth and inner peace of the individual, rather than a relationship with the divine. Secular spirituality is made up of the search for meaning outside of a religious institution; it considers one's relationship with the self, others, nature, and whatever else one considers to be the ultimate.
According to Robert C. Solomon, an American Professor of Philosophy, "spirituality is coextensive with religion and it is not incompatible with or opposed to science or the scientific outlook. Naturalized spirituality is spirituality without any need for the 'other‐worldly'. Spirituality is one of the goals, perhaps the ultimate goal, of philosophy."[3]
This 'universal truth' can be experienced through a secular or non-religious world view, without the need for a concept of 'higher power' or a 'supernatural being'.
The popularity of the 'yoga' in the West is integrally linked to secularization.[17]:117 This secularization began in India in the 1930s, when yoga teachers began to look for ways to make yoga accessible to the general public who did not have the opportunity to practice yoga as part of the Hindu faith.[17] As such, yoga began to move from the realm of religion to the realm of secularity, promoting Yoga as a non-Hindu practice both within the West and East.[17] Yoga has undeniably Hindu roots, first mentioned in the Katha Upanisad.[18] Despite these roots, yoga has been secularized,
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Cheers.
Sriram
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Thanks Sriram
I'll try to remember that . More tea vicar?
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I suspect that Walter and I lack any 'spiritual' instinct as well as a religious one, Sriram. I read terms like 'search for meaning' and 'whatever else one considers to be the ultimate', and it's as if someone has just stuck some random words together. Maybe it's my epigenetics getting in the way. I don't know which, if any, of us is more advanced in any meaningful sense. I just muddle by. That said, I think yoga can be very useful, and I have at various times practised tai chi. I don't see them as mystical.
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Unfortunately the word 'spirituality' can mean so many different things to so many different people. I have always regarded myself as 'spiritual' as I have repeated several times on this forum, although I don't regard this as some sort of big deal.
My kind of spirituality is possibly best expressed in this article:
https://thoughtcatalog.com/ben-atwood/2012/04/5-ways-atheism-can-be-spiritual/
I'm not really into Yoga, I have my own ways of meditating. However, if it suits others, no problem at all.
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Erwin Schrödinger (Science and Humanism 1951) quote:
I am born into an environment — I know not whence I came nor whither I go nor who I am. This is my situation as yours, every single one of you. The fact that everyone always was in this same situation, and always will be, tells me nothing. Our burning question as to the whence and whither — all we can ourselves observe about it is the present environment. That is why we are eager to find out about it as much as we can. That is science, learning, knowledge; it is the true source of every spiritual endeavour of man. We try to find out as much as we can about the spatial and temporal surroundings of the place in which we find ourselves put by birth…
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Erwin Schrödinger (Science and Humanism 1951) quote:
aparently he liked cats too !
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aparently he liked cats too !
Indeed, dead or alive or ... in an unreal state.
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aparently he liked cats too !
So, if I locked you in a box with a flask of poison, linked to a radioactive source, that had a 50% chance of releasing the poison and killing you, would you conclude that I liked you? :P
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I listened all the way through the OP but it seems to be a cut and paste of someone else's views. Whether or not that is so, the word spirituality seems to be becoming more and more vague the more I see it used. I repeat my definition of it which is that every single human has, to a greater or lesser degree, aspects of character/personality/whatever-you-want-to-call-it which come under the general heading of aesthetics - and that's spirituality as far as I'm concerned.
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So, if I locked you in a box with a flask of poison, linked to a radioactive source, that had a 50% chance of releasing the poison and killing you, would you conclude that I liked you? :P
aparently he only used ferral cats from the streets which had a less than 50/50 chance of survival anyway 🙀
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aparently he only used ferral cats from the streets which had a less than 50/50 chance of survival anyway 🙀
So they were 75% dead at the start? Or 75% not anything?
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100% conceptual and alive at the start, so ideal for the job.
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I suspect that Walter and I lack any 'spiritual' instinct as well as a religious one, Sriram. I read terms like 'search for meaning' and 'whatever else one considers to be the ultimate', and it's as if someone has just stuck some random words together. Maybe it's my epigenetics getting in the way. I don't know which, if any, of us is more advanced in any meaningful sense. I just muddle by. That said, I think yoga can be very useful, and I have at various times practised tai chi. I don't see them as mystical.
The point is to look at spiritual aspirations as not necessarily arising from religious doctrines. That is what many westerners do not seem to understand.
Even people who do not belong to any religion, live and die. Most of them need a meaning and purpose to life...and the idea of 'we are ultimately food for bacteria' may not be good enough. Realizing that an inner search will provide the solution... is what spirituality is all about.
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The point is to look at spiritual aspirations as not necessarily arising from religious doctrines. That is what many westerners do not seem to understand.
Even people who do not belong to any religion, live and die. Most of them need a meaning and purpose to life...and the idea of 'we are ultimately food for bacteria' may not be good enough. Realizing that an inner search will provide the solution... is what spirituality is all about.
I think it's very clear from the replies on here and many previous times when this has been discussed that 'westerners' don't fit your lazy generalization. I'm not bog on solutions, they seem too grandiose. I'd rather be in Philadephia.
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I think it's very clear from the replies on here and many previous times when this has been discussed that 'westerners' don't fit your lazy generalization. I'm not bog on solutions, they seem too grandiose. I'd rather be in Philadephia.
You may not want solutions...fine....but many people do. And they find it through an inner quest. That is the point.
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You may not want solutions...fine....but many people do. And they find it through an inner quest. That is the point.
Whatever gets people through is fine with me. Doesn't make anything real.
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Whatever gets people through is fine with me. Doesn't make anything real.
Different levels of reality. Strings...elementary particles...atoms...elements...compounds...normal day to day world...solar system...galaxies...universe... 11 dimensions...Parallel worlds...Dark Matter...Dark Energy.. All equally real...though not necessarily obvious to us.
How many levels in the inner world can be only guessed....
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Sriram,
Different levels of reality. Strings...elementary particles...atoms...elements...compounds...normal day to day world...solar system...galaxies...universe... 11 dimensions...Parallel worlds...Dark Matter...Dark Energy.. All equally real...
No they're not.
...though not necessarily obvious to us.
No - that's why we use reason and evidence to ascribe truth values more reliably accurate than just guessing.
How many levels in the inner world can be only guessed....
As can whether there's such a thing as "the inner world" in the first place.
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Different levels of reality. Strings...elementary particles...atoms...elements...compounds...normal day to day world...solar system...galaxies...universe... 11 dimensions...Parallel worlds...Dark Matter...Dark Energy.. All equally real...though not necessarily obvious to us.
How many levels in the inner world can be only guessed....
Did it hurt when you waved your hands that hard?
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Different levels of reality. Strings...elementary particles...atoms...elements...compounds...normal day to day world...solar system...galaxies...universe... 11 dimensions...Parallel worlds...Dark Matter...Dark Energy.. All equally real...though not necessarily obvious to us.
If they aren't 'obvious', then how do we determine how reliable our sense of them is? If they are obvious, how do we determine how reliable our sense of them is? They may well be 'different levels of reality' - different perspectives or manifestations of some underlying principle, say - but how do we tell? How can we be confident of such a pronouncement? Some of these concepts are extremely well evidenced and supported by decades or centuries of observational measurement and verification of dozens upon dozens of hypotheses, others are purely conjectural at this stage, awaiting confirmation and some are not even that, fringe science or pseudoscience posturings.
As to the core issue of 'secular spirituality', I return time and again to the fundamental: what does 'spiritual' actually mean? Taken literally, it's about a spirit that we can't demonstrate and which doesn't seem to have a place in how we understand the human organism operating. More loosely it seems like 'spirituality' is just a culturally acceptable way to say 'religious magic'... at which point a secular spirituality just becomes 'magic', doesn't it?
O.
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Outrider,
Spirituality is about an inner quest. You might consider that statement as vague but that is the truth. It is about identifying the core part of ourselves shorn of mental images, personality and so on.
Just imagine that you are somehow connected through wires and stuff to a virtual reality game. Within the game you are living as a person in a virtual world. In the game you do lots of things that the game is programmed to do. You enjoy and suffer as a virtual person. You identify with that personality completely. You even forget that you are a separate human being independent of the game.
If at one point, when you realize that you are not the person within the game but that you are a real person independent of it...you will then try to extricate yourself from the game and its numerous connections to you. That is when you start detaching yourself from your virtual self and identify with the real you.
Spirituality is similar. It is about detaching ourselves from our earthly personality and realizing that we are actually independent of it. That is what 'Knowing Thyself' means.
Religion is one of the means of achieving this Self Realization. It is a cultural and regional creation with a spiritual base. In the absence of civil courts and law enforcement, it also has many other purposes such as social control and enforcing discipline.
The magic element is not relevant at all, except that in the process of realizing our independence we also realize that there is a bigger world 'outside' the virtual world...which in fact creates the virtual world. This might appear as magic for some people. It could be normal for others.
Cheers.
Sriram
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Sriram,
First you’ve just had your more recent mistakes (that “elementary particles...atoms...elements...compounds...normal day to day world...solar system...galaxies...universe... 11 dimensions...Parallel worlds” are “all equally real” for example when they’re no such thing) corrected and, as ever, you’ve just ignored the corrections. What’s your thinking – that we just pretend you didn’t say these things and carry on regardless?
Spirituality is about an inner quest. You might consider that statement as vague but that is the truth. It is about identifying the core part of ourselves shorn of mental images, personality and so on.
If you’re “shorn of mental images, personality and so on” there’s no “you” left to do the “questing”. Does that not trouble you at all? Nothing?
Just imagine that you are somehow connected through wires and stuff to a virtual reality game. Within the game you are living as a person in a virtual world. In the game you do lots of things that the game is programmed to do. You enjoy and suffer as a virtual person. You identify with that personality completely. You even forget that you are a separate human being independent of the game.
In a way we are “connected through wires and stuff to a virtual reality game”. Our brains sit in darkness and silence, and construct our realities via the “wires and stuff” that connect our sensory organs via the holes in our skulls.
If at one point, when you realize that you are not the person within the game but that you are a real person independent of it...you will then try to extricate yourself from the game and its numerous connections to you. That is when you start detaching yourself from your virtual self and identify with the real you.
If you “try to extricate yourself from the game” on what basis would you determine that the alternative reality you come up with isn’t just white noise?
Spirituality is similar. It is about detaching ourselves from our earthly personality and realizing that we are actually independent of it. That is what 'Knowing Thyself' means.
“Earthly reality” eh? What would a non-earthly reality be then, and how would you know that it is real at all?
Religion is one of the means of achieving this Self Realization. It is a cultural and regional creation with a spiritual base. In the absence of civil courts and law enforcement, it also has many other purposes such as social control and enforcing discipline.
The magic element is not relevant at all, except that in the process of realizing our independence we also realize that there is a bigger world 'outside' the virtual world...which in fact creates the virtual world. This might appear as magic for some people. It could be normal for others.
You have just jumped again from guessing at a “bigger world outside the virtual world” to “realizing” there’s a bigger world outside the virtual world. That’s called the fallacy of reification – one of the various failures in reasoning on which you rely. If you want to demonstrate a separate, “non-earthly” reality then you have all your work ahead of you still to argue for it rather than just assert it to be so.
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Outrider,
Spirituality is about an inner quest. You might consider that statement as vague but that is the truth. It is about identifying the core part of ourselves shorn of mental images, personality and so on.
Just imagine that you are somehow connected through wires and stuff to a virtual reality game. Within the game you are living as a person in a virtual world. In the game you do lots of things that the game is programmed to do. You enjoy and suffer as a virtual person. You identify with that personality completely. You even forget that you are a separate human being independent of the game.
If at one point, when you realize that you are not the person within the game but that you are a real person independent of it...you will then try to extricate yourself from the game and its numerous connections to you. That is when you start detaching yourself from your virtual self and identify with the real you.
Spirituality is similar. It is about detaching ourselves from our earthly personality and realizing that we are actually independent of it. That is what 'Knowing Thyself' means.
Religion is one of the means of achieving this Self Realization. It is a cultural and regional creation with a spiritual base. In the absence of civil courts and law enforcement, it also has many other purposes such as social control and enforcing discipline.
The magic element is not relevant at all, except that in the process of realizing our independence we also realize that there is a bigger world 'outside' the virtual world...which in fact creates the virtual world. This might appear as magic for some people. It could be normal for others.
Cheers.
Sriram
I'm sure that might mean something to you, Sriram, but it's a world away from my idea of spirituality, and it just serves to demonstrate the way how loosely that word can be fashioned to suit a person's ideas.
For instance, in contrast to you, spirituality for me is all about understanding 'mental images, personality and so on', and by understanding being hopefully more able to relate to the world around us.
The idea of 'Knowing Thyself' for me is inextricably bound to understanding my earthly personality(I know of no other, unless you are willing or able to produce evidence of this 'other').
If one takes Outy's magical 'spirit' element' as a defining element of spirituality, of course, then he is entirely correct, as there is not the slightest evidence that such an element exists.
For me this 'bigger world' outside the 'virtual world' which our brains inhabit is accessed mainly through rationality, logic and science which are often able to demonstrate that our intuitive(and quite possibly useful evolutionary) assumptions are not necessarily the way the world works. In contrast to that, religions often seem to encourage and exaggerate such assumptions such that the 'real' world tends to become lost in a world of unreality.
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Hi Blue,
I think there's a bit of the "cap'n Kirk" about Sriram
"make it so "
Anything you say , sir 👽
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Hi Blue,
I think there's a bit of the "cap'n Kirk" about Sriram
"make it so "
Anything you say , sir 👽
Please do not blaspheme mixing Picard's catchphrase with Kirk.
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Please do not blaspheme mixing Picard's catchphrase with Kirk.
OMG
WHAT HAVE I DONE ? please forgive me 😂😂😂
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Hey Walter,
Hi Blue,
I think there's a bit of the "cap'n Kirk" about Sriram
"make it so "
Anything you say , sir 👽
"It's logic Jim, but not as we know it..."
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OMG
WHAT HAVE I DONE ? please forgive me 😂😂😂
Phasers on obliteration
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Hey Walter,
"It's logic Jim, but not as we know it..."
look Jim , it's the moon
No it's only Uhura bending over too far again ! 😝
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look Jim , it's the moon
No it's only Uhura bending over too far again ! 😝
Uhura 'moonlighting' in an Ilfracombe back street?
Have I Got News for You: William Shatner Apologises for Ilfracombe ...
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/william-shatner-laced-prostitution-ilfracombe-news-354355
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Spirituality is about an inner quest. You might consider that statement as vague but that is the truth. It is about identifying the core part of ourselves shorn of mental images, personality and so on.
If you take away my personality, in what way is there anything of ''me" left? I am not a body, if all the parts were replaced with suitable mechanics, I'd still be me - I am the personality, I am the pattern of theoughts and understandings occurring in the brain inside the head in the physical world.
Just imagine that you are somehow connected through wires and stuff to a virtual reality game. Within the game you are living as a person in a virtual world. In the game you do lots of things that the game is programmed to do. You enjoy and suffer as a virtual person. You identify with that personality completely. You even forget that you are a separate human being independent of the game.
If at one point, when you realize that you are not the person within the game but that you are a real person independent of it...you will then try to extricate yourself from the game and its numerous connections to you. That is when you start detaching yourself from your virtual self and identify with the real you.
I would still be me - the same personality - I'd just be having to apply that personality to unfamiliar situations. I stay the same, reality, as I understand it, changes but I don't. That's not the impression I get when most people talk about Spirituality, though..
Spirituality is similar. It is about detaching ourselves from our earthly personality and realizing that we are actually independent of it. That is what 'Knowing Thyself' means.
Again, what is there of me that's independent of my 'Earthly personality', and what reason do I have to think that there is anything of me that qualifies? If it's independent of my Earthly personality, how do I think I know anything of it? How do I find out? How do I have any confidence in the Idea? I acknowledge the possibility, but it's like acknowledging the possibility of a multiverse - it's sort of plausible, it there's no strong reason to think that it's real.
Religion is one of the means of achieving this Self Realization. It is a cultural and regional creation with a spiritual base. In the absence of civil courts and law enforcement, it also has many other purposes such as social control and enforcing discipline.
You'll forgive me, bu t my take on religious institutions fulfilling legal duties like that is them expanding beyond 'spiritual' concerns and stepping into the political domain. Not that they don't, perhaps, have that right, but the doing so is outside of their 'Spiritual' mandate and adopting a temporal one.
The magic element is not relevant at all, except that in the process of realizing our independence we also realize that there is a bigger world 'outside' the virtual world...which in fact creates the virtual world. This might appear as magic for some people. It could be normal for others.
How can it be 'realise' when there's no basis for it?
Just want to add, because I dwant not think I've said it before, but I appreciate the time and the patience you give and show.
O.
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Outrider,
Let me first try to sort out your comments first. Managed it with some difficulty.. :)
We are not just the body. We are also not just the mind or the personality that we develop as we grow.
As I have said before, as new born infants, we have no mind or self awareness or personality. But we do have our Consciousness. An infant is conscious though not self aware.
This consciousness is what we are essentially. It is around this consciousness or self or subject, that the personality and mind get built as we grow. And it is this consciousness that we believe, leaves the body at the point of death.
During spiritual practice, the self awareness that we have developed as we grew and which is the basis of our individuality and ego, starts expanding and moves initially from the body to the mind to our inner thoughts and feelings to finally the underlying Consciousness itself. It is an inward journey. When our self awareness merges with the underlying consciousness itself this is called Self Realization or Knowing Thyself.
We CAN and should externalize ourselves from our own mind, ego, intellect and personality. This is the essence of spirituality....shedding the illusion of our individual personality.
Consciousness is the foundation of subjectivity itself. It cannot be an objective phenomenon. The entire process of spiritual practice is subjective in nature and deals entirely with self awareness and consciousness, not with any external object. That is why it is an exercise that one has to undertake himself/herself and not something that can be shown by someone else.
The reason most people here don't understand this is because of the fixation with objective external reality. This is a kind of mental programming which makes a person think that all subjective processes are merely imaginary and unless something is seen or experienced externally through the senses or through instruments it cannot be 'real'.
Thanks for your kind comments, Outrider. I don't mind explaining or discussing any spiritual matter provided the other person is both civil and is able to get the fundamentals of what I am saying. Otherwise it becomes merely an exercise in name calling and is also a dead end discussion, repeating endlessly the same words again and again. I just ignore such 'conversations'.
Thanks & cheers.
Sriram
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Let me first try to sort out your comments first. Managed it with some difficulty.. :)
Apologies, I've got an iPad since I was last here, but the keyboard isn't set out quite like a regular keyboard... :-[
We are not just the body. We are also not just the mind or the personality that we develop as we grow.
I think I'd go further than saying we aren't just the body, I'd suggest that we aren't even the body. I would, however, say that we're just the mind that grows over time. If I'm in a car crash and lose both my arm and my car, I undergo a change, but I'm still fundamentally me - the degree to which I change differs between losing the hand and losing the car, but the nature of the change is similar as I change as I respond to the event. A brain injury, on the other hand (depending on which part of the brain is affected, and to what extent), fundamentally changes me instantly - that's not the normal living change of personality with 'growth' (for want of a better word), it's the injury to the brain. If I lose my head in the accident, I stop when the activity in that brain stops.
As I have said before, as new born infants, we have no mind or self awareness or personality. But we do have our Consciousness. An infant is conscious though not self aware.
As a father of four children, I'm confident that infants are born with intrinsic preferences and traits - they may be reinforced or sublimated over time, but they're all different at birth. At conception, maybe, they're all blank slates, but I suspect that there are some intrinsic tendencies written into the genetics; certainly, with two autistic children, those traits (which are intrinsic parts of their personalities) are developmental and partially derived from their genetic traits.
This consciousness is what we are essentially. It is around this consciousness or self or subject, that the personality and mind get built as we grow. And it is this consciousness that we believe, leaves the body at the point of death.
How does personality differ, in this sense, from consciousness? Surely consciousness is one of the facets of that personality? And what reason do I have to think that it continues after death? As I said above, if the car crash takes of my head, the brain in which the activity that I experience as personality and consciousness stops; without that brain architecture to define the neural activity that is me in what way would 'I' carry on, even if we could determine that there were something that did?
During spiritual practice, the self awareness that we have developed as we grew and which is the basis of our individuality and ego, starts expanding and moves initially from the body to the mind to our inner thoughts and feelings to finally the underlying Consciousness itself. It is an inward journey. When our self awareness merges with the underlying consciousness itself this is called Self Realization or Knowing Thyself.
This, perhaps, is why I can't see this - you are somehow discerning personality as a manifestation of consciousness, both of which are manifestations of the body. I don't see personality as intrinsically linked to the body - I think (though, obviously, we don't have the technology to test it) that a sufficiently powerful computer programmed to mimic my personality would be indistinguishable from me.
We CAN and should externalize ourselves from our own mind, ego, intellect and personality. This is the essence of spirituality....shedding the illusion of our individual personality.
That means something to you, I get that, I just don't get what it means. Externalise ourselves from our minds? We are our minds, how we can externalise ourselves from ourselves?
Consciousness is the foundation of subjectivity itself. It cannot be an objective phenomenon.
I don't think that logically follows. The fact that my awareness of my consciousness self (and, indeed, of everything else) is subjective doesn't mean that my consciousness can't be an objective phenomenon, it just means that I will always struggle to prove that it is.
The entire process of spiritual practice is subjective in nature and deals entirely with self awareness and consciousness, not with any external object.
And yet it relies on accepting the premise that there is something more to us than that self-awareness and consciousness, an external object to our personality that is somehow part of us and somehow not?
That is why it is an exercise that one has to undertake himself/herself and not something that can be shown by someone else.
The religion and spirituality shelf of my local library would suggest that not everyone agrees with you on that one :)
The reason most people here don't understand this is because of the fixation with objective external reality. This is a kind of mental programming which makes a person think that all subjective processes are merely imaginary and unless something is seen or experienced externally through the senses or through instruments it cannot be 'real'.
I don't think that's the problem. I think we don't understand, certainly I don't, because that subjectivity means that there is no way to verify the claim, no way to differentiate 'spirituality' from 'hallucination' or 'dream' or any of the other purely mental activities - it's different in nature to those, and I don't meant that in a pejorative way, I'm trying to show that the very subjectivity that you're pointing out is intrinsic is the reason it's not universally accepted. You can suggest that you dreamt of pretty much anything, and I've no reason to doubt you, but when you suggest that your purely subject sense that there is something more to people than just their personality doesn't match up to my subjective experience, we need something independent to be the arbiter.
When scientists say that there are electromagnetic radio waves, none of us can directly perceive them, so we build independent pieces of equipment to show that they're there. There isn't an equivalent for 'spirit', it seems to me.
(Preview suggests that the formatting worked better from this keyboard :) )
O.
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Sriram,
Let me first try to sort out your comments first. Managed it with some difficulty..
We are not just the body. We are also not just the mind or the personality that we develop as we grow.
So you assert. If not for mind and body, what on earth else do you think we are then?
As I have said before…
…and no doubt been corrected on before but just ignored the correction, but ok…,
…as new born infants, we have no mind or self awareness or personality. But we do have our Consciousness. An infant is conscious though not self aware.
Oh dear. Of course babies have minds. Consciousness is an emergent property of brains – if you have a mind, then you’re conscious and vice versa; it’s not difficult.
This consciousness is what we are essentially. It is around this consciousness or self or subject, that the personality and mind get built as we grow. And it is this consciousness that we believe, leaves the body at the point of death.
It doesn’t “leave the body”; it just ceases to exist.
During spiritual practice, the self awareness that we have developed as we grew and which is the basis of our individuality and ego, starts expanding and moves initially from the body to the mind to our inner thoughts and feelings to finally the underlying Consciousness itself. It is an inward journey. When our self awareness merges with the underlying consciousness itself this is called Self Realization or Knowing Thyself.
We CAN and should externalize ourselves from our own mind, ego, intellect and personality. This is the essence of spirituality....shedding the illusion of our individual personality.
Again, your terminology is hopeless here. If you “externalise” yourself from your mind there is no “you” remaining. If what you’re trying to say here is that you find it helpful to block or ignore the thoughts you have in favour of focusing on, say, breathing then just say so. The folk gibberish isn’t helping you at all though.
Consciousness is the foundation of subjectivity itself.
Consciousness is what distinguishes more developed life from the inanimate. To that extent it’s the “foundation” of everything necessary to be alive.
It cannot be an objective phenomenon.
Oh dear. Why can’t it be an ”objective phenomenon” according to you? In the unlikely event that you manage to answer that, perhaps you should share this remarkable insight with the neuroscientists in particular who are busy investigating it precisely as an objective phenomenon.
The entire process of spiritual practice is subjective in nature and deals entirely with self awareness and consciousness, not with any external object. That is why it is an exercise that one has to undertake himself/herself and not something that can be shown by someone else.
Like trying to learn how to swim from a book you mean?
The reason most people here don't understand this is because of the fixation with objective external reality. This is a kind of mental programming which makes a person think that all subjective processes are merely imaginary and unless something is seen or experienced externally through the senses or through instruments it cannot be 'real'.
And you collapse again into fallacious thinking and insult. By “most people don’t understand this” what you actually mean is that most people don’t agree with your unqualified assertions. And there’s no “fixation with objective external reality” either – just with some means of distinguishing the more likely to be true by some objective measure from the unqualified guessing of subjective narratives reified into supposed facts. And no-one says that “all subjective processes are merely imaginary” at all (that’s another of your straw men). Rather what people more capable of thinking that you actually say is that, without some means to test the claims of fact made from subjective experience, there’s no means to distinguish any such claim from any other. One person’s subjective experience of, say, auras is as (in)valid as the next person’s subjective experience of leprechauns, and that’s the problem you always run away from when you over privilege your opinions as facts.
Thanks for your kind comments, Outrider. I don't mind explaining or discussing any spiritual matter provided the other person is both civil and is able to get the fundamentals of what I am saying. Otherwise it becomes merely an exercise in name calling and is also a dead end discussion, repeating endlessly the same words again and again. I just ignore such 'conversations'.
That’s not true either. What you ignore is corrections made to your countless mistakes in reasoning so as to allow you to repeat them over and over again. Why are you so dishonest about this?
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Sriram,
I don't mind explaining or discussing any spiritual matter provided the other person is both civil and is able to get the fundamentals of what I am saying.
But when it's explained to you that the fundamentals of what you are saying are wrong and you just ignore those explanations, the dead end is of your own making. Why not at least try to grasp the explanations and either accept or rebut them rather than carry on as if they hadn't been given to you?
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Apologies, I've got an iPad since I was last here, but the keyboard isn't set out quite like a regular keyboard... :-[
I think I'd go further than saying we aren't just the body, I'd suggest that we aren't even the body. I would, however, say that we're just the mind that grows over time. If I'm in a car crash and lose both my arm and my car, I undergo a change, but I'm still fundamentally me - the degree to which I change differs between losing the hand and losing the car, but the nature of the change is similar as I change as I respond to the event. A brain injury, on the other hand (depending on which part of the brain is affected, and to what extent), fundamentally changes me instantly - that's not the normal living change of personality with 'growth' (for want of a better word), it's the injury to the brain. If I lose my head in the accident, I stop when the activity in that brain stops.
As a father of four children, I'm confident that infants are born with intrinsic preferences and traits - they may be reinforced or sublimated over time, but they're all different at birth. At conception, maybe, they're all blank slates, but I suspect that there are some intrinsic tendencies written into the genetics; certainly, with two autistic children, those traits (which are intrinsic parts of their personalities) are developmental and partially derived from their genetic traits.
How does personality differ, in this sense, from consciousness? Surely consciousness is one of the facets of that personality? And what reason do I have to think that it continues after death? As I said above, if the car crash takes of my head, the brain in which the activity that I experience as personality and consciousness stops; without that brain architecture to define the neural activity that is me in what way would 'I' carry on, even if we could determine that there were something that did?
This, perhaps, is why I can't see this - you are somehow discerning personality as a manifestation of consciousness, both of which are manifestations of the body. I don't see personality as intrinsically linked to the body - I think (though, obviously, we don't have the technology to test it) that a sufficiently powerful computer programmed to mimic my personality would be indistinguishable from me.
That means something to you, I get that, I just don't get what it means. Externalise ourselves from our minds? We are our minds, how we can externalise ourselves from ourselves?
I don't think that logically follows. The fact that my awareness of my consciousness self (and, indeed, of everything else) is subjective doesn't mean that my consciousness can't be an objective phenomenon, it just means that I will always struggle to prove that it is.
And yet it relies on accepting the premise that there is something more to us than that self-awareness and consciousness, an external object to our personality that is somehow part of us and somehow not?
The religion and spirituality shelf of my local library would suggest that not everyone agrees with you on that one :)
I don't think that's the problem. I think we don't understand, certainly I don't, because that subjectivity means that there is no way to verify the claim, no way to differentiate 'spirituality' from 'hallucination' or 'dream' or any of the other purely mental activities - it's different in nature to those, and I don't meant that in a pejorative way, I'm trying to show that the very subjectivity that you're pointing out is intrinsic is the reason it's not universally accepted. You can suggest that you dreamt of pretty much anything, and I've no reason to doubt you, but when you suggest that your purely subject sense that there is something more to people than just their personality doesn't match up to my subjective experience, we need something independent to be the arbiter.
When scientists say that there are electromagnetic radio waves, none of us can directly perceive them, so we build independent pieces of equipment to show that they're there. There isn't an equivalent for 'spirit', it seems to me.
(Preview suggests that the formatting worked better from this keyboard :) )
O.
Outrider,
We cannot be the mind also because as I have said, new born infants don't yet have a mind. The mind develops with experience. Similarly the personality. But without these the child lives and has consciousness. This means that consciousness is fundamental around which the mind is built.
You are suggesting that consciousness is a product of the body. Maybe. But it is equally possible that consciousness is independent of the body and merely occupies the body. That is the difference between a living and a dead person. Body is there but no consciousness.
There are many cases of NDE's that suggest that consciousness can exist independent of the body. Some leading scientists like Max Planck have also suggested that Consciousness is fundamental
That is the basis on which spiritual hypotheses are built.
The analogy of the virtual world that I have given earlier is one way of understanding how consciousness can be fundamental to the world. A virtual world for example cannot exist without consciousness. It is consciousness that 'creates' the virtual world. Otherwise it is just some magnetic impulses on a CD. It is all a mental construct that we get projected into and get caught in the illusion.
On the basis of this perception, when we start seeking to come out of the illusion, the process is what we see as spirituality. There is a philosophy around which spirituality is built, it is not something someone dreamt up.
There is nothing to explain beyond that because it is a fundamental matter of perception. Nothing one can demonstrate here. There was a time when EM radiation (other than light) was not known of, even though it existed all around us. Even Gravity was not known as a force until Newton came along even though people have experienced it for millennia. I also mention often about how 'light' does not exist for the born blind. So, merely because we cannot see or measure something does not mean it does not exist.
If you do not see how consciousness can exist independent of the body, then we have to leave the discussion right there because that is a basic divide. You cannot convince me and I cannot convince you. :)
Cheers.
Sriram
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We cannot be the mind also because as I have said, new born infants don't yet have a mind.
And, as I said, as the parent of four very different children I can attest to the fact they do have inherent traits from birth.
The mind develops with experience. Similarly the personality. But without these the child lives and has consciousness.
Mind and personality (what is the difference? aren't they ways of looking at the same thing?) do grow - perhaps when you say 'consciousness' you mean what I mean by 'personality' or 'self'.
This means that consciousness is fundamental around which the mind is built.
I think, rather, consciousness is a trait that mind manifests; consciousness is the mind's experience of mind.
You are suggesting that consciousness is a product of the body. Maybe. But it is equally possible that consciousness is independent of the body and merely occupies the body. That is the difference between a living and a dead person. Body is there but no consciousness.
I've obviously not been clear - I don't think consciousness is product of the body, I think consciousness is a product of mind; currently, the only place we can have minds that we're aware of is within a body, but I don't see that the biology is inherently necessary to the concept of consciousness, it's just a current practical limitation.
There are many cases of NDE's that suggest that consciousness can exist independent of the body.
And many explanations of those experiences which do not require the hypothesis of a consciousness extant outside of the architecture of the brain.
Some leading scientists like Max Planck have also suggested that Consciousness is fundamental.
That it's Planck supporting it doesn't make it any better an idea, the idea has to stand on its own merits. With all the respect that Planck is undoubtedly due, his area of expertise was theoretical physics, not psychology or neuroscience.
That is the basis on which spiritual hypotheses are built.
I think, unless I've missed something, that to hijack the term 'hypothesis' is a little misleading - this isn't a conjecture being posited in order to run controlled tests to either confirm or refute it, it's a faith claim.
The analogy of the virtual world that I have given earlier is one way of understanding how consciousness can be fundamental to the world. A virtual world for example cannot exist without consciousness. It is consciousness that 'creates' the virtual world. Otherwise it is just some magnetic impulses on a CD. It is all a mental construct that we get projected into and get caught in the illusion.
However, in you analogy the entirety of consciousness is moved from one reality to another. There is no segmenting off half of it, the physical body was being cut out of the loop and replaced with a simulation, but the self in its entirety remains the same. You are positing that there is something different to that self, something different to the pattern of activity in the human brain that is 'me'.
On the basis of this perception, when we start seeking to come out of the illusion, the process is what we see as spirituality.
Are you suggesting that the physical world, this world in which I'm typing to you, is an illusion? Which of us is it that isn't real?
There is a philosophy around which spirituality is built, it is not something someone dreamt up.
All philosophies are something someone dreamt up - they might be inspired by their sense of the world, or of spirituality, or of something else, but they are all subjective conjecture to be communicated.
There is nothing to explain beyond that because it is a fundamental matter of perception.
Then how can some people sense it and others not? How can we not find the organ which does the sensing, and work out why it doesn't work properly in some people?
Nothing one can demonstrate here.
And if it can't be demonstrated then you can't have any confidence in it.
There was a time when EM radiation (other than light) was not known of, even though it existed all around us. Even Gravity was not known as a force until Newton came along even though people have experienced it for millennia. I also mention often about how 'light' does not exist for the born blind. So, merely because we cannot see or measure something does not mean it does not exist.
But, equally, until someone can demonstrate that it does exist with a degree of confidence, there is no reason to accept the claim. Of course, following from Newton, Einstein and others demonstrated that gravity is, in fact, not a force at all... The concept exists, the phenomenon is demonstrable: Newton and Einstein were attempting to explain the measurable phenomenon. You are suggesting a phenomenon for which there is no objective (as objective as we can manage) evidence.
If you do not see how consciousness can exist independent of the body, then we have to leave the discussion right there because that is a basic divide. You cannot convince me and I cannot convince you. :)
Perhaps, so.
O.
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Sriram,
We cannot be the mind also because as I have said, new born infants don't yet have a mind.
FFS! Of course newborns have minds - they'd be dead otherwise - but those minds don't have the same ability to process and depth of knowledge that comes with more experience. Current estimates are that from age one to three the brain produces more than a million new neural connections each second, but hey let's not let facts and evidence get in the way of the woo eh?
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Hi Blue ,
Just so's you know , I learnt to swim from a book about 50 years ago
However I am yet to get into the water 🏊🏊🏊
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P.S.
I also own a Cycling Proficiancy Certificate which used to belong to my (dead) friend
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There was a time when EM radiation (other than light) was not known of, even though it existed all around us. Even Gravity was not known as a force until Newton came along even though people have experienced it for millennia. I also mention often about how 'light' does not exist for the born blind. So, merely because we cannot see or measure something does not mean it does not exist.
::) You gotta laugh.
As has been pointed out to you many, many, many times, this 'argument' applies just as much to Santa, leprechauns, and the Loch Ness monster - that should give you a clue as to why it's so utterly hopeless.
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Mind and personality (what is the difference? aren't they ways of looking at the same thing?) do grow - perhaps when you say 'consciousness' you mean what I mean by 'personality' or 'self'.
The problem, as usual, is that Sriram is trying to communicate something using the concepts of Hinduism but with words associated with western psychology and they don't always fit. As regards 'mind' this tends to refer to a collection including the intellectual faculty which has the ability to form and retain concepts, to reason and judge, the emotional element and the memory including evolutionary and personal. The ego is comprised of those elements which the individual most identifies with and this can take a variety of forms and is changeable over a lifetime. The 'personality' is those elements which the individual wishes to present to the outer world. It often involves trying to conceal those other elements which don't measure up to the proposed image. 'Consciousness' is said to be unsullied and present throughout the mind and body and operates at a number of levels, but has formed egotistical attachments. This 'Consciousness' is said to be the true essence or 'Self' and the various yogic practices are to liberate it from its ego attachments so that a different identity arises. I doubt if there is any presentable objective or subjective evidence just the methods suggested to 'see for yourself'.
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ekim,
The problem, as usual, is that Sriram is trying to communicate something using the concepts of Hinduism but with words associated with western psychology and they don't always fit. As regards 'mind' this tends to refer to a collection including the intellectual faculty which has the ability to form and retain concepts, to reason and judge, the emotional element and the memory including evolutionary and personal. The ego is comprised of those elements which the individual most identifies with and this can take a variety of forms and is changeable over a lifetime. The 'personality' is those elements which the individual wishes to present to the outer world. It often involves trying to conceal those other elements which don't measure up to the proposed image. 'Consciousness' is said to be unsullied and present throughout the mind and body and operates at a number of levels, but has formed egotistical attachments. This 'Consciousness' is said to be the true essence or 'Self' and the various yogic practices are to liberate it from its ego attachments so that a different identity arises. I doubt if there is any presentable objective or subjective evidence just the methods suggested to 'see for yourself'.
No, that’s not the “the problem”. The problems (plural) are these:
1. He makes assertions of fact that are flat out wrong. Chemotherapy can cure cancer, molecules and a multiverse are not equally true, babies do have minds etc no matter how much he blithely asserts the contrary claims and then ignores the corrections.
2. He seems to think that consciousness is some kind of universal force or something that we can somehow access, but that then “leaves the body” when we die. There’s no evidence at all for that.
3. He confuses the narratives he tells himself to explain his experiences (“auras” etc) with facts that explain his experiences, apparently oblivious to the problem that there’s no means to verify the claim and to the problem that such explanations are always culture-specific – an aura for a Hindu, leprechauns for someone else etce
4. He tries to play on reason’s turf by occasionally attempting arguments, but almost invariably those arguments are wrong – worse, he appears not to care how wrong they are because he perpetrates the same fallacies over and over again despite having them explained to him.
5. He’s so lost in the certainty of his convictions that he cannot even countenance arguments that undo his rationale for them so he’s reduced to telling us he won’t reply unless someone “can get the fundamentals” when what he actually means is “agree with me”. And when, quite reasonably, they don’t do that he’s reduced to insult – “microscopic thinking”, “Westerners don’t get it” etc.
In short, just like AB he’s here only to proselytise but never actually to discuss anything. Although he has nothing of interest or value to say, he is nonetheless a classic (though unedifying) example of the Dunning-Kruger effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
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And, as I said, as the parent of four very different children I can attest to the fact they do have inherent traits from birth.
Yes...of course they have inherent traits. Those are traits built into the body, genes. But the mind is largely absent. That is why feral children do not develop normally. Mental development needs training and learning. Once the mind develops, the ego develops, self awareness develops and the personality develops.
But at the time of birth only Consciousness exists in a body. In other words, only life exists.
Mind and personality (what is the difference? aren't they ways of looking at the same thing?) do grow - perhaps when you say 'consciousness' you mean what I mean by 'personality' or 'self'.
There are three things. Consciousness, Mind and body. Consciousness is fundamental, life itself. Even insects are conscious. Mind is something that is built around the consciousness. It requires learning. Though the brain acts as a platform for the mind, the brain itself (neural connections) develops in line with learning. So, mind is a factor of learning and brain development. All forms of life have consciousness but do not have a similar mind because it is brain dependent.
Personality is the sum total of our consciousness, mind, ego and body. It is the totality of what we become as we learn and grow. It changes.
I think, rather, consciousness is a trait that mind manifests; consciousness is the mind's experience of mind.
No. mind is brain dependent and is different for different living beings. Consciousness is fundamental for all living beings. Even plants are conscious. I agree that we often use terms like conscious mind/unconscious mind loosely, but they are essentially different. That is why there is such a fuss about consciousness in philosophical circles. Mind can be understood to a large extent, but not consciousness. Check out David Chalmers. There is a thread here somewhere about Panpsychism.
I've obviously not been clear - I don't think consciousness is product of the body, I think consciousness is a product of mind; currently, the only place we can have minds that we're aware of is within a body, but I don't see that the biology is inherently necessary to the concept of consciousness, it's just a current practical limitation.
OK...we are just using the words differently. But what exactly do you mean by ' I don't see that the biology is inherently necessary to the concept of consciousness'? Do you think consciousness can exist independent of biology?
And many explanations of those experiences which do not require the hypothesis of a consciousness extant outside of the architecture of the brain.
That it's Planck supporting it doesn't make it any better an idea, the idea has to stand on its own merits. With all the respect that Planck is undoubtedly due, his area of expertise was theoretical physics, not psychology or neuroscience.
Many of such experiences (NDE's) cannot be explained by just brain architecture. It is because people try very hard to circumvent other explanations and try to force fit explanations into the standard mold that we think we have 'explained' things.
Regarding Planck,we cannot suddenly get selective and brush him off. He is a man of significant intellect and logical thinking. His philosophical views do indeed matter. If Richard Dawkins's philosophical views can be taken seriously, why not Max Planck?!!
I think, unless I've missed something, that to hijack the term 'hypothesis' is a little misleading - this isn't a conjecture being posited in order to run controlled tests to either confirm or refute it, it's a faith claim.
Well...a hypothesis... "is a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts".
I don't see why spiritual ideas cannot be hypotheses to explain life and death, as long as they don't conflict with other discovered phenomena.
However, in you analogy the entirety of consciousness is moved from one reality to another. There is no segmenting off half of it, the physical body was being cut out of the loop and replaced with a simulation, but the self in its entirety remains the same. You are positing that there is something different to that self, something different to the pattern of activity in the human brain that is 'me'.
It is the mind that gets projected into the virtual world. The basic consciousness remains outside. We in fact, use the mind to create a whole new personality within the virtual world. We could even lose sense of our real identity and get locked into the virtual identity.
Are you suggesting that the physical world, this world in which I'm typing to you, is an illusion? Which of us is it that isn't real?
It could be. There are various ways in which we can think of it as an illusion. Even at the physical level, we are essentially lot of empty space with some elementary particles. But it doesn't feel that way. Everything looks solid to us because of our senses and brain architecture. To a virus the world will look very different.
At the level of Consciousness it could be much more complex.
Then how can some people sense it and others not? How can we not find the organ which does the sensing, and work out why it doesn't work properly in some people?
Sensing is not just about organs, it is also about neural connectivity. This depends on experience, culture and training.
But, equally, until someone can demonstrate that it does exist with a degree of confidence, there is no reason to accept the claim. Of course, following from Newton, Einstein and others demonstrated that gravity is, in fact, not a force at all... The concept exists, the phenomenon is demonstrable: Newton and Einstein were attempting to explain the measurable phenomenon. You are suggesting a phenomenon for which there is no objective (as objective as we can manage) evidence.
But all phenomena cannot be demonstrated with equal degree of physical precision. Everything is not physics. Biology is less precise, psychology is much less so. Spirituality is probably very much less precise. We should learn to live with that.
Perhaps, so.
O.
Cheers
Sriram
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Yes...of course they have inherent traits. Those are traits built into the body, genes. But the mind is largely absent. That is why feral children do not develop normally. Mental development needs training and learning. Once the mind develops, the ego develops, self awareness develops and the personality develops.
I don't see it that way - the mind is there, it's simply innocent/primitive/primal... whichever of those you want to see it as. It's in a basic state, it will undergo 'refinement' over time, as it develops in response to stimuli, but that doesn't mean that it's not there. Feral children aren't feral because they don't have a mind, they are feral because the stimuli they experience are different to those we are used to, and so the development of their minds is different as well. Mental development itself doesn't need training and learning - or, rather, all experience is training and learning for the mind, so there's no need for a specific regimen - unless you have a particular goal planned for that mind. Ego, self-awareness and personality are all aspects of the mind, or particular perspectives on the mind, they cannot be removed from it, nor are they added later. They may not be prominent early on, but they are intrinsic aspects of the human mind.
But at the time of birth only Consciousness exists in a body. In other words, only life exists.
I fundamentally disagree, infants have personality traits as soon as they are born: there are fussy babies, content babies, active babies, curious babies...
There are three things. Consciousness, Mind and body. Consciousness is fundamental, life itself.
Not exactly how I see it. Mind includes aspects such as consciousness, body is a vehicle in which a mind explores the world.
Even insects are conscious.
Are they? Do we know this? Is instinctive response to stimuli without recursive awareness 'conscious'?
Mind is something that is built around the consciousness. It requires learning. Though the brain acts as a platform for the mind, the brain itself (neural connections) develops in line with learning. So, mind is a factor of learning and brain development. All forms of life have consciousness but do not have a similar mind because it is brain dependent.
We're using the terms in slightly different ways here, I think, but even within your framework I'd say this: mind is something that manifests along with consciousness, I'm not sure I'd pitch either as a 'source' or 'base' for the other. Mind itself I wouldn't say is a factor of learning (and the associated changes in neuroarchitecture) but rather that the growth of the mind/self/personality is a function of that learning.
Personality is the sum total of our consciousness, mind, ego and body. It is the totality of what we become as we learn and grow. It changes.
I'm not sure it's as clear cut as that, I don't see that there's a clear distinction between these concepts. It's a little like how quantum theory demonstrates that waves and particles are different manifestations of the same underlying 'quanta', so I think that consciousness, ego, mind and personality are all slightly different perspectives or emphases on the same underlying 'self'. Body I see as separate, as I've explained before.
No. mind is brain dependent and is different for different living beings. Consciousness is fundamental for all living beings. Even plants are conscious.
And that's where I'm pretty definitively not in agreement - plants are not conscious, there's no architecture there for a consciousness to manifest in.
I agree that we often use terms like conscious mind/unconscious mind loosely, but they are essentially different. That is why there is such a fuss about consciousness in philosophical circles. Mind can be understood to a large extent, but not consciousness.
I'm pretty sure no-one in either psychological or neuroscientific academia is confident that 'mind can be understood to a large extent'.
Check out David Chalmers. There is a thread here somewhere about Panpsychism.
Chalmers is a dualist, much as you - he's postulating something non-physical to fill a gap in the knowledge of how the physical works rather than accepting that we don't know. He has no evidence for this non-physical element, he just has questions that we can't answer yet. He's not definitively wrong, he's just not basing his concept on anything other than a reluctance to accept that we don't know yet.
OK...we are just using the words differently. But what exactly do you mean by ' I don't see that the biology is inherently necessary to the concept of consciousness'? Do you think consciousness can exist independent of biology?
Yes. As I said, although beyond our current technology, I don't see any reason a sufficiently advanced computer architecture could host a human consciousness.
Many of such experiences (NDE's) cannot be explained by just brain architecture.
Some of the specific detail of NDE's can't be completely explained by our current understanding of brain architecture, but the general phenomenon can.
It is because people try very hard to circumvent other explanations and try to force fit explanations into the standard mold that we think we have 'explained' things.
No, it's because we can accept 'we don't know yet' that we don't have a need to resort to unevidenced claims.
Regarding Planck,we cannot suddenly get selective and brush him off. He is a man of significant intellect and logical thinking. His philosophical views do indeed matter. If Richard Dawkins's philosophical views can be taken seriously, why not Max Planck?!!
They can, I was not dismissing Planck, I was putting him into a context, and pointing out that his arguments had to stand on their own merits, not on the fact they were derived from a brain hosting Max Planck.
Well...a hypothesis... "is a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts".
In the common parlance it's an equivalent to a 'notion', but there is the more technical origin of it where it's part of a scientific enquiry - it's formatted in such a way that it can be tested. If you can't test it, it's not an hypothesis.
I don't see why spiritual ideas cannot be hypotheses to explain life and death, as long as they don't conflict with other discovered phenomena.
There's no intrinsic reason, so long as the conjecture includes some means by which it can be tested - if there's no way to test it, it doesn't mean that it's wrong, of course, just that there's no reason to accept the notion.
It is the mind that gets projected into the virtual world. The basic consciousness remains outside.
The mind, even in your framework, exists in the consciousness. The vehicle of the body has been replaced with the vehicle of the simulation, the mind/consciousness is interacting with the virtual reality rather than the real reality, but the mind and the consciousness are not separated.
We in fact, use the mind to create a whole new personality within the virtual world. We could even lose sense of our real identity and get locked into the virtual identity.
In what way is it a new mind? It has the same experiences, the same morality, the same principles, the same emotional tendencies - it's applying those to a different external existence, but the internal elements at the point of transfer are the same. Those different experiences will result in a different 'growth' than would have otherwise happened, but that's no different to the change in 'growth' that would happen if you, say, emigrated and underwent new and different experiences.
It could be. There are various ways in which we can think of it as an illusion. Even at the physical level, we are essentially lot of empty space with some elementary particles. But it doesn't feel that way. Everything looks solid to us because of our senses and brain architecture. To a virus the world will look very different.
I see, I don't think that's 'illusion' - or, at least, I think that word has implications that go beyond what you're trying to say here. I'd say that our experience of reality is only one level of perception, but that doesn't make the real world an illusion. It's still there, it's still real, although our understanding of it is limited and constrained to some extent by our subjective nature and the sensory organs we've evolved with.
At the level of Consciousness it could be much more complex.
It could, but it comes down again to the question 'is there any reason to think that it is?'
Sensing is not just about organs, it is also about neural connectivity. This depends on experience, culture and training.
I disagree, but that's an information theory issue. The organs gather data, and that data is not subjective. Our minds turn that data into information, and that interpretation that makes it information is indeed subjective.
But all phenomena cannot be demonstrated with equal degree of physical precision. Everything is not physics. Biology is less precise, psychology is much less so. Spirituality is probably very much less precise. We should learn to live with that.
Phenomena cannot be EXPLAINED with an equal degree of precision, and therefore cannot be predicted with an equal degree of precision, but the phenomena themselves can be absolutely detected, that's the point. Consciousness is experienced, and various sciences are trying to explain the mechanisms, and to measure them to demonstrate or refute those explanations. Sprituality, it seems to me, wants to posit an explanation that can't be measured, can't be checked, can't be tested, and therefore can't be relied upon.
O.
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Sriram,
But all phenomena cannot be demonstrated with equal degree of physical precision. Everything is not physics. Biology is less precise, psychology is much less so. Spirituality is probably very much less precise. We should learn to live with that.
Same with leprechauns then - after all, if you can just reify your guess "spiritual" into a fact so can anyone else about anything else. Your problem here (well, one of many problems but ok) is that you just assume your premise to be true and then justify it by asserting it to be hard to detect or measure. The issue though isn't that these methods are imprecise - it's that for your claims they don't apply at all. You can in other words guess at anything you like, but you cannot just assert the guess to be correct when there are no means whatsoever to verify it.
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Hi Outrider,
Yeah...the mind has many layers. It is like software. From Machine code to assembler to higher languages there are many levels. No doubt, babies are born with some sort of a basic Operating system. But that cannot really be called mind because there is no thought or self awareness. These gets built later as the babies grow. The Personality forms as self awareness and ego develops.
Yes...there are differences in infants because their genes are different and therefore their operating systems could be somewhat different. And for that matter, even Consciousness in individuals need not be the same either. There could be differences in individual consciousness.
At any rate, the point is that Consciousness is different from Mind (though we loosely use them interchangeably). Consciousness is basic even though we have no idea what it is. It is the source of subjectivity or self and forms the substratum to our individual mind, ego, and personality.
Consciousness can exist independent of brain or any kind of physical platform (biological or robotic). It is the essence of life itself.
Consciousness could itself have many layers which we see as the largely unknown unconscious mind. The unconscious is seem by many thinkers as forming a major part of our mental make up while the conscious part as only relatively minor (like a iceberg where 90% is beneath the surface).
It is possible that at deeper levels individual consciousness is connected to other humans and even to all life forms, forming some kind of a universal consciousness. Like the internet.
I know that you and most others don't see it that way. You see consciousness as a product of some physical process. This fundamental difference cannot be bridged easily. Hence these never ending discussions. :D
Cheers.
Sriram
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Outrider,
As regards spirituality.....it is a valid hypothesis as an alternative to the materialistic one proposed by science. Science suggests that life and consciousness are products of physical processes. Spirituality suggests that life and consciousness are independent from the physical process and merely use the physical entity as a platform.
Maybe we cannot immediately prove this as correct through any method...but maybe we would be able to at some point of time. There are many conjectures such as parallel universes, Strings and Dark energy that cannot be proved immediately (if ever) but we do take them as possibilities.
I don't see why theories on 'consciousness being independent of the physical process' cannot also be seen similarly, as valid hypotheses.
Cheers.
Sriram
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Yeah...the mind has many layers. It is like software. From Machine code to assembler to higher languages there are many levels. No doubt, babies are born with some sort of a basic Operating system. But that cannot really be called mind because there is no thought or self awareness. These gets built later as the babies grow. The Personality forms as self awareness and ego develops.
No self-awareness? None at all? I'll concede that it's not particularly sophisticated, and it will in most cases develop over time (quite rapidly, early on) but I'm not sure that we can say there's no self-awareness at all.
Yes...there are differences in infants because their genes are different and therefore their operating systems could be somewhat different. And for that matter, even Consciousness in individuals need not be the same either. There could be differences in individual consciousness.
Differences in the 'type' of consciousness, or differences in the particulars? Sort of like different from red cars like a plane, or different from red cars like blue cars?
At any rate, the point is that Consciousness is different from Mind (though we loosely use them interchangeably). Consciousness is basic even though we have no idea what it is. It is the source of subjectivity or self and forms the substratum to our individual mind, ego, and personality.
Let's agree that mind/personality/consciousness/self/ego are interlinked to some greater or lesser extent - perhaps one of them fundamentally underlies the others, perhaps they are different aspects of one thing, I don't think that distinction is that central to this interaction.
Consciousness can exist independent of brain or any kind of physical platform (biological or robotic). It is the essence of life itself.
It can? Excellent, can you show me where we've established that, please, because it seems to me that's the crux of this. This idea that something intrinsic to life, or at least our lives, is independent of our physical bodies and the activity within it seems fairly fundamental to the claims of 'spirituality' at one level or another, so if you can demonstrate that this is a real phenomenon then the problem's solved.
Consciousness could itself have many layers which we see as the largely unknown unconscious mind. The unconscious is seem by many thinkers as forming a major part of our mental make up while the conscious part as only relatively minor (like a iceberg where 90% is beneath the surface).
It could; I'd suggest, like many biological concepts, it probably doesn't have discrete layers so much as a gradual shift of perspective which we try to stratify to make it easier for us to classify and define. We aren't particularly good - whether intrinsically or culturally I'm not sure - at looking at variagated systems in an holistic manner.
It is possible that at deeper levels individual consciousness is connected to other humans and even to all life forms, forming some kind of a universal consciousness. Like the internet.
It's possible, but I'm reasonably confident that every reliable investigation into the possibility has come up with nothing, or it would have made the news.
I know that you and most others don't see it that way. You see consciousness as a product of some physical process. This fundamental difference cannot be bridged easily. Hence these never ending discussions.
It's not so much that we don't see it that way, as that we don't find any reason to accept the notion because it's not an observed phenomenon, and there's no reliable demonstration of it. There are any number of phenomena which we can demonstrate reliably which we can't directly observe - any number of demonstrations of quantum effects, for instance - so the mere fact that we don't immediately perceive it clearly isn't definitively an obstacle, but if we can neither perceive it nor independently demonstrate it, then what reason is there to accept the claim?
O.
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Thank you both for this exchange. I agree with Outrider that Sriram's explanations could never be described as based on evidence, but as food for thought, they're excellent fodder!
Very interesting and highly enjoyable! Thanks again.
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As regards spirituality.....it is a valid hypothesis as an alternative to the materialistic one proposed by science.
It isn't: science hypotheses involves stuff like definitions of terms, a theory that outlines how the various aspects might interlink and, crucially, some sort of method that provides a basis to investigate the theory by, for instance, collecting data. 'Spirituality', whatever that means, currently seems to entail nothing that is comparable to how science approaches testing hypotheses - what is needed, if you consider that 'spirituality' has a similar validity to science, is a method that is specific to 'spirituality' that stands scrutiny independently of personal opinions or preferences.
Science suggests that life and consciousness are products of physical processes.
It does, and is investigated by scientists using various methods: this TV series would be worth watching, though I don't know if it is available in India.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_with_David_Eagleman
Spirituality suggests that life and consciousness are independent from the physical process and merely use the physical entity as a platform.
It may suggest that, but it needs more than just a suggestion to be taken seriously. How could you ever know this suggestion was wrong?
Maybe we cannot immediately prove this as correct through any method...but maybe we would be able to at some point of time. There are many conjectures such as parallel universes, Strings and Dark energy that cannot be proved immediately (if ever) but we do take them as possibilities.
I don't see why theories on 'consciousness being independent of the physical process' cannot also be seen similarly, as valid hypotheses.
Do 'theories of consciousness' involve claims that consciousness is independent of biology and, if they do say this, and in what ways could this claim be established? Your take on this seems to me like a mix of personal incredulity and false equivalence: for instance, String Theory involves more than just saying along the lines of 'I think there are these string things', whereas "consciousness being independent of the physical process" seems like no more than just a statement of how you'd like things to be.
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Sriram,
As regards spirituality.....it is a valid hypothesis as an alternative to the materialistic one proposed by science.
In which case leprechauns must be a valid hypothesis for rainbows as an alternative to the materialistic one proposed by science.
How many corrections that you ignore does it take for people reasonably to conclude that you’re deliberately dishonest? Of course it’s not a “valid hypothesis” at all. A hypothesis is a potential explanation for something that can be tested to determine whether or not it’s correct. What you’re trying to describe here is a guess, which is a very different thing.
What you then do is to jump straight from your guess to it being a fact, with no connecting logic or evidence of any kind.
What does this repeated behaviour say about you do you think?
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It's not so much that we don't see it that way, as that we don't find any reason to accept the notion because it's not an observed phenomenon, and there's no reliable demonstration of it. There are any number of phenomena which we can demonstrate reliably which we can't directly observe - any number of demonstrations of quantum effects, for instance - so the mere fact that we don't immediately perceive it clearly isn't definitively an obstacle, but if we can neither perceive it nor independently demonstrate it, then what reason is there to accept the claim?
That's the problem with the so called spiritual inner journey, it is personal and probably impossible to demonstrate to others. Even observed phenomena like dream images, so far as I know, cannot be demonstrated to others, but those who have had dreams themselves may acknowledge the possibility that the dreamer is telling the truth. The 'spiritual' path tends to be about the inner observer (consciousness) and its isolation from the observed and that includes thoughts, concepts, dreams, images and notions such as universal consciousness, reincarnation etc. The observed tends to be related to form and the observer to the formless as a result of inner stillness methods.
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ekim,
That's the problem with the so called spiritual inner journey, it is personal and probably impossible to demonstrate to others. Even observed phenomena like dream images, so far as I know, cannot be demonstrated to others, but those who have had dreams themselves may acknowledge the possibility that the dreamer is telling the truth. The 'spiritual' path tends to be about the inner observer (consciousness) and its isolation from the observed and that includes thoughts, concepts, dreams, images and notions such as universal consciousness, reincarnation etc. The observed tends to be related to form and the observer to the formless as a result of inner stillness methods.
“Spiritual journeys” are fine for those who have them, and if their various practices – from yoga to meditation to burning sage leaves to, for all I know, hopping backwards in very small circles with pencils up your nose while chanting the early hits of Kylie Minogue – make you feel at one with the world then well and good. What Sriram does though is hugely to overreach by asserting his internal experiences to identify objective facts about the world (“auras”, “biofield” etc) that are supposedly real only the “microscopic thinking” and being “Western” stop us from identifying these things as he does.
Essentially his schtick is just to assert his guesses into facts, but when occasionally he does try to make an argument to justify his beliefs he collapses immediately into very bad reasoning. For some reason he then just ignores the corrections he’s given, but corrections they remain nonetheless.
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ekim,
hopping backwards in very small circles with pencils up your nose while chanting the early hits of Kylie Minogue – make you feel at one with the world then well and good.
I've tried that and it doesn't work and you also end up with nostrils like King Kong. Don't do it!
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ekim,
I've tried that and it doesn't work and you also end up with nostrils like King Kong. Don't do it!
Maybe if I tried Jason Donovan instead?
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Hi Outrider, Gordon and others,
I am still unable to see the problem.
I can understand when spirituality is driven by fanatical religions, mythical stories and powerful religious organisations ... and people don't like it. Fine. But what I am talking about is secular spirituality that is free of any cultural or regional or historical baggage. Why people should have such an emotional issue with it is not clear.
In fact, we need not even call it spirituality. It is just philosophy. It tries to explain many aspects of human life. It is a hypothesis or conjecture like so many others that we accept readily as possible. It explains life & death, NDE's, morality and the many complexities that science does not explain except as random or coincidence.
It explains the 'why' of life and not just the 'how' that science manages. Of course, science will argue that there need not be any'why'. But that is a cop out and not an argument!
When leading philosophers and even scientists suggest anything remotely dualistic or non material or in agreement with such philosophies, it is dismissed outright. Why?
As far as evidence is concerned, what evidence do we need for 'Life'? Nobody can deny that Life exists...and no one really knows what it is. The argument is just that... whether it is something independent of the body or not. We have NDE's to suggest that life (and consciousness) is probably independent of the body. What do scientists have to suggest that life is just a physical process? Any proof?
They will of course, throw the Negative Proof fallacy at me. It is an almost robotic response. That argument is however not correct. So far science only has evidence against specific religious mythology, not against fundamental philosophical issues.
If the philosophical point about Life (and consciousness) being independent of the body is not acceptable, science should be able to prove it wrong. If not, accept it as an alternative possibility. What is the problem?!
Cheers.
Sriram
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Hi Outrider, Gordon and others,
I am still unable to see the problem.
I can understand when spirituality is driven by fanatical religions, mythical stories and powerful religious organisations ... and people don't like it. Fine. But what I am talking about is secular spirituality that is free of any cultural or regional or historical baggage. Why people should have such an emotional issue with it is not clear.
Perhaps because 'spirituality' seems akin to cultural and religious baggage.
In fact, we need not even call it spirituality. It is just philosophy. It tries to explain many aspects of human life. It is a hypothesis or conjecture like so many others that we accept readily as possible. It explains life & death, NDE's, morality and the many complexities that science does not explain except as random or coincidence.
It doesn't seem to 'explain' anything whatsoever, since there is no basis to see 'spirituality' having any explanatory value.
It explains the 'why' of life and not just the 'how' that science manages. Of course, science will argue that there need not be any'why'. But that is a cop out and not an argument!
Here you are begging the question, in assuming your conclusion that 'why' is a valid question that has an answer.
When leading philosophers and even scientists suggest anything remotely dualistic or non material or in agreement with such philosophies, it is dismissed outright. Why?
Such things are only dismissed in the absence of any basis to take them seriously.
As far as evidence is concerned, what evidence do we need for 'Life'? Nobody can deny that Life exists...and no one really knows what it is. The argument is just that... whether it is something independent of the body or not. We have NDE's to suggest that life (and consciousness) is probably independent of the body. What do scientists have to suggest that life is just a physical process? Any proof?
They will of course, throw the Negative Proof fallacy at me. It is an almost robotic response. That argument is however not correct. So far science only has evidence against specific religious mythology, not against fundamental philosophical issues.
If the philosophical point about Life (and consciousness) being independent of the body is not acceptable, science should be able to prove it wrong. If not, accept it as an alternative possibility. What is the problem?!
I suspect you're trying to portray 'spirituality' as being 'philosophy' in an effort to give the former credibility, but in essence you're thrashing about wrapped in fallacies (of which is NPF is but one).
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I can understand when spirituality is driven by fanatical religions, mythical stories and powerful religious organisations ... and people don't like it. Fine. But what I am talking about is secular spirituality that is free of any cultural or regional or historical baggage. Why people should have such an emotional issue with it is not clear.
Unfortunately, there's partially the issue of being tarred with the same brush to an extent, but there is an underlying issue. If there's no independent means by which we can verify these spiritual claims, then in order to accept your right to claim truth for your understanding, we have to extend the same courtesy to those with more hateful or immediately apparently damaging spiritual claims. On the evidentiary level, where is the difference between your spiritual claim that all life is interconnected on a non-physical level and the Westboro Baptist spiritual claim that homosexuality is vile? You aren't expecting political regulation to enforced your claim in the same way they are, but the claims themselves have to be afforded the same respect because they are functionally identical claims: spiritual claims with no evidentiary backing or basis.
In fact, we need not even call it spirituality. It is just philosophy.
It's not just philosophy, it's making claims about reality which is the realm of science.
It tries to explain many aspects of human life. It is a hypothesis or conjecture like so many others that we accept readily as possible. It explains life & death, NDE's, morality and the many complexities that science does not explain except as random or coincidence.
It explains life and death, but so does Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Jainism, Norse Mythology, Egyptian Mythology and Lord of the Rings. None of which has any independent support. You aren't expecting or 'demanding' that we accept that you are right, and I appreciate that live and let live attitude, really I do.
What I can't understand, though, is why you accept that it's true in the absence of any of the evidence. You have, presumably, some sort of subjective sense that it's right, that it makes sense and 'feels' appropriate, but I have those feelings about things which they evidence contradicts or fails to support and so I accept that human subjective experience is eminently fallible and follow the evidence. In the absence of evidence, or in those instances where the evidence actively suggests other causes for the effects that you are experience, how do you cleave to your spiritual claims?
It explains the 'why' of life and not just the 'how' that science manages.
Which presumes there is a why. Why do you think there's a why?
Of course, science will argue that there need not be any'why'. But that is a cop out and not an argument!
Uh.. no, I don't think it is. Nature is uncaring, nature is unswayed by our wants or needs, nature merely is, so far as we can see. 'Why' is presuming a consciousness, because you need to have a 'want' in order to justify a 'why' - otherwise there is simply an inevitable series of cause and effect. (Arguably, from some views, even with the 'why' there is just the inevitable series of cause and effect, but that's a different discussion again).
When leading philosophers and even scientists suggest anything remotely dualistic or non material or in agreement with such philosophies, it is dismissed outright. Why?
Again, i don't think it's dismissed outright, although there is a healthy degree of scepticism after all this time. It's dismissed because, on investigation, there is no justification for the claim beyond 'but we don't have a complete explanation from science'. 'Science doesn't (currently) know' does not inevitably lead to 'therefore metaphysical concept beyond science's remit'. Duality repeatedly falls over because when asked for some evidence for the non-physical part the answer is invariably a variant of 'but you can't explain...' That's not an argument for anything, it's an argument against thinking science has all the answers, which is an argument the overwhelming majority of the scientifically literate aren't making.
As far as evidence is concerned, what evidence do we need for 'Life'? Nobody can deny that Life exists...and no one really knows what it is.
The evidence for life is all the living things - again, that whole tying variation down to neat definitions and classifications, as you suggest, is something of an issue here.
The argument is just that... whether it is something independent of the body or not. We have NDE's to suggest that life (and consciousness) is probably independent of the body.
NDE do not suggest that either life or consciousness are independent of the body, they suggest that extreme conditions in the brain result in extreme sensations or interpretations - that's hardly radical. It requires us to take on face value the subjective account of some of the near death experiences as accurate, whilst ignoring the innumerable instances of human experience in extreme states being unreliable to presume that claims of 'leaving the body behind' have validity. I dream of place I'm not on a regular basis - is that justification for assuming that something of me has actually left my body?
What do scientists have to suggest that life is just a physical process? Any proof?
Notwithstanding that all scientific understanding is provisional... Every reliable understanding we have of the human experience is rooted in physically demonstrable phenomena. When we step into subjective understandings, such as psychological understandings, so the reliability and precision of the understandings plummets precipitously. Science hasn't 'proven' life is just a physical process, and doesn't claim to have done. However, science proceeds on the presumption that life is just a physical process based on the fact that there is ample demonstration of physical phenomena well-linked to the processes of life, and absolutely no support for any claims of non-physical instances.
They will of course, throw the Negative Proof fallacy at me. It is an almost robotic response. That argument is however not correct. So far science only has evidence against specific religious mythology, not against fundamental philosophical issues.
The negative proof fallacy is valid - that it gets thrown around a lot is because people fail to accept the burden of proof lies upon anyone making a claim.
If the philosophical point about Life (and consciousness) being independent of the body is not acceptable, science should be able to prove it wrong.
It's not the obligation of 'science' to disprove a conjecture. The onus is on whomever is making the claim to demonstrate reason why their claim should be accepted, and at that point the details of their claim can be validated or refuted.
If not, accept it as an alternative possibility. What is the problem?!
It is an acceptable alternative possibility, but that's currently all it is, a possibility. In order to elevate it into something that should taken seriously as anything more than an intriguing thought experiment should require some sort of evidence, but instead we have multi-million pound marketing machines selling people 'non-religious spirituality' as an alternative to the multi-million pound military-industrial 'religious spirituality' complex that we've still not effectively gotten a sensible handle on.
O.
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Sriram,
I am still unable to see the problem.
I’ve just explained it to you – see Reply 53. If you want to limit “spirituality” to a process that makes you feel better about things, well and good; if you want to assert it to be a means of identifying objective facts about the world that only your practices can reveal though then you run into trouble immediately (ie, how you would verify such claims).
I can understand when spirituality is driven by fanatical religions, mythical stories and powerful religious organisations ... and people don't like it. Fine. But what I am talking about is secular spirituality that is free of any cultural or regional or historical baggage. Why people should have such an emotional issue with it is not clear.
Don’t be silly. The objective facts you claim to be true (“auras” etc) are precisely those to which you happen to be most enculturated.
In fact, we need not even call it spirituality. It is just philosophy. It tries to explain many aspects of human life.
No it isn’t. If the term “philosophy” is to mean something other than unqualified woo then it needs to be coherent and logically robust. Your “philosophy” is neither.
It is a hypothesis or conjecture like so many others that we accept readily as possible. It explains life & death, NDE's, morality and the many complexities that science does not explain except as random or coincidence.
No it isn’t – it’s just guessing for the reasons I’ve explained to you and you ignore, and it explains nothing at all (unless that is you also accept that leprechauns explain rainbows).
It explains the 'why' of life and not just the 'how' that science manages. Of course, science will argue that there need not be any'why'. But that is a cop out and not an argument!
Nope, not even close – see above.
When leading philosophers and even scientists suggest anything remotely dualistic or non material or in agreement with such philosophies, it is dismissed outright. Why?
Because there’s no evidence for it.
As far as evidence is concerned, what evidence do we need for 'Life'?
Erm, how about having a definition of it and then examination of objects in the world to see whether they satisfy that definition?
Nobody can deny that Life exists...and no one really knows what it is.
Yes they do. There are cases where there are definitional issues – are viruses life for example – but that’s another matter. For the most part we’re quite capable of categorising life and non-life.
The argument is just that... whether it is something independent of the body or not. We have NDE's to suggest that life (and consciousness) is probably independent of the body.
No we don’t. We have various possible material explanations for the experience(s) you call NDEs, and no good reason to dismiss them out of hand in favour of a supernatural one for which there’s no evidence whatever.
What do scientists have to suggest that life is just a physical process? Any proof?
Because the only evidence available tells us that life is physical and – for the god knows how many times this has been explained to you – science doesn’t deal in proofs. Why is this so hard for you to grasp?
They will of course, throw the Negative Proof fallacy at me. It is an almost robotic response. That argument is however not correct. So far science only has evidence against specific religious mythology, not against fundamental philosophical issues.
Wrong again. Science doesn’t have “evidence against specific religious mythology” at all. What science is is indifferent to such mythology because it offers nothing for the tools and methods of science to examine. And yes, science can falsify the “fundamental philosophical issues” when it produces answers that are more testably robust than the answers produced by faith. Thus, say, a mythologist might say that the appearance of dancing figures over a desert is evidence of spirits; science on the other hand will tell us that it’s a mirage caused by the refraction of light over a hot surface. The difference is that we can test and work with the latter whereas the former has no explanatory value.
And that’s the problem with your "spiritual" claims – you’re a mythologist.
If the philosophical point about Life (and consciousness) being independent of the body is not acceptable, science should be able to prove it wrong.
FFS! Science can no more “prove it wrong” than it can prove leprechauns wrong! What the hell is wrong with you?
If not, accept it as an alternative possibility. What is the problem?!
The problem is your dishonesty. No one dismisses the possibility of anything, your assertions and my leprechauns included. What you then try to do though is to elide a possibility into a probability with no logic or evidence to take you from the former to the latter.
This shouldn't be difficult to grasp Sriram, even for you.
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I can understand when spirituality is driven by fanatical religions, mythical stories and powerful religious organisations ... and people don't like it. Fine. But what I am talking about is secular spirituality that is free of any cultural or regional or historical baggage. Why people should have such an emotional issue with it is not clear.
I don't think there is an emotional reaction. I also don't think that you get that rational people, who want evidence in order to accept objective claims, object to all unsupported claims being presented as facts, not only religion.
In fact, we need not even call it spirituality. It is just philosophy. It tries to explain many aspects of human life. It is a hypothesis or conjecture like so many others that we accept readily as possible. It explains life & death, NDE's, morality and the many complexities that science does not explain except as random or coincidence.
It explains the 'why' of life and not just the 'how' that science manages. Of course, science will argue that there need not be any'why'. But that is a cop out and not an argument!
Quite apart from the fact that it really doesn't explain most of those things, people don't generally just accept hypotheses or conjectures - they need to be argued for and, ultimately, to make testable predictions and be open to falsification. The predictions then need to be tested.
Your hand-waving assertions here, don't come close.
When leading philosophers and even scientists suggest anything remotely dualistic or non material or in agreement with such philosophies, it is dismissed outright. Why?
Well, apart from the lack of any sensible arguments, the entire idea has been tainted by people like you making silly, overblown assertions. If science misses something in this area, blame the endless baseless woo that people have come up with about it.
As far as evidence is concerned, what evidence do we need for 'Life'? Nobody can deny that Life exists...and no one really knows what it is.
This is tangential nonsense. We have plenty of evidence of what life is. It's difficult to define exactly but it's not that there's some mysterious about it.
The argument is just that... whether it is something independent of the body or not.
There is no evidence whatsoever for something independent of the body and plenty of evidence to the contrary.
We have NDE's to suggest that life (and consciousness) is probably independent of the body.
- yawn -
What do scientists have to suggest that life is just a physical process? Any proof?
There is lots of evidence it's a physical process and if you are claiming otherwise, you need to provide the evidence.
They will of course, throw the Negative Proof fallacy at me. It is an almost robotic response. That argument is however not correct. So far science only has evidence against specific religious mythology, not against fundamental philosophical issues.
If the philosophical point about Life (and consciousness) being independent of the body is not acceptable, science should be able to prove it wrong. If not, accept it as an alternative possibility. What is the problem?!
Wow - you know the response and yet you still robotically fall into the same fallacy! Apply blue's leprechaun test. If your "argument" is just as (in)valid for them, which it is, it's a terrible argument.
If the philosophical point about the existence of leprechauns is not acceptable, science should be able to prove it wrong. If not, accept it as an alternative possibility. What is the problem?!
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Just like to say how much I enjoyed reading the recent posts on this thread. I think Sriram has played his part too, although I have to say that, for me, he has just been the catalyst for some thought provoking posts, many of which I find myself agreeing with wholeheartedly. :)
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Hi Outrider,
Unfortunately, there's partially the issue of being tarred with the same brush to an extent, but there is an underlying issue. If there's no independent means by which we can verify these spiritual claims, then in order to accept your right to claim truth for your understanding, we have to extend the same courtesy to those with more hateful or immediately apparently damaging spiritual claims. On the evidentiary level, where is the difference between your spiritual claim that all life is interconnected on a non-physical level and the Westboro Baptist spiritual claim that homosexuality is vile? You aren't expecting political regulation to enforced your claim in the same way they are, but the claims themselves have to be afforded the same respect because they are functionally identical claims: spiritual claims with no evidentiary backing or basis.
I am glad you realize that there is a tendency to tar secular philosophy also with the same brush as mythological beliefs. That's more than what most others understand. Unfortunately, the West has not been exposed to secular philosophy (till recent years) in the same working manner that is common in India. Indian philosophy (Vedanta, Yoga, Samkhya) are not idle intellectual musings. They are living models that can be practiced and followed to see the reality for oneself.
The essence of Indian philosophy is practice and more practice. And there is no fanatical zeal to push any idea. Its all left to ones own initiative. Don't accept it?
...no problem!
It's not just philosophy, it's making claims about reality which is the realm of science.
It explains life and death, but so does Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Jainism, Norse Mythology, Egyptian Mythology and Lord of the Rings. None of which has any independent support. You aren't expecting or 'demanding' that we accept that you are right, and I appreciate that live and let live attitude, really I do.
What I can't understand, though, is why you accept that it's true in the absence of any of the evidence. You have, presumably, some sort of subjective sense that it's right, that it makes sense and 'feels' appropriate, but I have those feelings about things which they evidence contradicts or fails to support and so I accept that human subjective experience is eminently fallible and follow the evidence. In the absence of evidence, or in those instances where the evidence actively suggests other causes for the effects that you are experience, how do you cleave to your spiritual claims?
Of course, Philosophy does make claims about reality! Science is nothing but a subset of philosophy that follows a certain specific methodology. Nothing more. This type of methodology is fine in specific areas of study but will not work everywhere. There are many aspects of reality that are outside the boundary that science has fixed for itself. As I keep saying, Science is like a microscope. A microscope works fine in certain areas but cannot be used for everything.
There is ample evidence for Consciousness being independent of the body. We should be mentally prepared to see it, that is all. Attitudes and mental blocks can be major hindrances in our understanding of certain phenomena. Even though we might believe that we are open to ideas if there is sufficient evidence, this is not always true. Evidence itself can be quite tricky.
Which presumes there is a why. Why do you think there's a why?
Uh.. no, I don't think it is. Nature is uncaring, nature is unswayed by our wants or needs, nature merely is, so far as we can see. 'Why' is presuming a consciousness, because you need to have a 'want' in order to justify a 'why' - otherwise there is simply an inevitable series of cause and effect. (Arguably, from some views, even with the 'why' there is just the inevitable series of cause and effect, but that's a different discussion again).
Again, i don't think it's dismissed outright, although there is a healthy degree of scepticism after all this time. It's dismissed because, on investigation, there is no justification for the claim beyond 'but we don't have a complete explanation from science'. 'Science doesn't (currently) know' does not inevitably lead to 'therefore metaphysical concept beyond science's remit'. Duality repeatedly falls over because when asked for some evidence for the non-physical part the answer is invariably a variant of 'but you can't explain...' That's not an argument for anything, it's an argument against thinking science has all the answers, which is an argument the overwhelming majority of the scientifically literate aren't making.
Why should there not be a 'why'? Merely because science says so?! That is not correct. We don't have to presume a consciousness. It is there for all to experience. Duality is a very common philosophical position because that is what life and death seem to indicate. NDE's add to this argument. There must be a very good reason not to accept dualism. Science is yet to provide any such reason.
The evidence for life is all the living things - again, that whole tying variation down to neat definitions and classifications, as you suggest, is something of an issue here.
NDE do not suggest that either life or consciousness are independent of the body, they suggest that extreme conditions in the brain result in extreme sensations or interpretations - that's hardly radical. It requires us to take on face value the subjective account of some of the near death experiences as accurate, whilst ignoring the innumerable instances of human experience in extreme states being unreliable to presume that claims of 'leaving the body behind' have validity. I dream of place I'm not on a regular basis - is that justification for assuming that something of me has actually left my body?
Notwithstanding that all scientific understanding is provisional... Every reliable understanding we have of the human experience is rooted in physically demonstrable phenomena. When we step into subjective understandings, such as psychological understandings, so the reliability and precision of the understandings plummets precipitously. Science hasn't 'proven' life is just a physical process, and doesn't claim to have done. However, science proceeds on the presumption that life is just a physical process based on the fact that there is ample demonstration of physical phenomena well-linked to the processes of life, and absolutely no support for any claims of non-physical instances.
Consciousness is an enigma. Science merely assumes that it is a product of physical processes. Fine. But as you say, science hasn't yet proven any materialistic origin to consciousness and therefore the dualistic position is also a perfectly valid philosophical position.
The negative proof fallacy is valid - that it gets thrown around a lot is because people fail to accept the burden of proof lies upon anyone making a claim.
It's not the obligation of 'science' to disprove a conjecture. The onus is on whomever is making the claim to demonstrate reason why their claim should be accepted, and at that point the details of their claim can be validated or refuted.
It is an acceptable alternative possibility, but that's currently all it is, a possibility. In order to elevate it into something that should taken seriously as anything more than an intriguing thought experiment should require some sort of evidence, but instead we have multi-million pound marketing machines selling people 'non-religious spirituality' as an alternative to the multi-million pound military-industrial 'religious spirituality' complex that we've still not effectively gotten a sensible handle on.
I agree that it is not the obligation of science to disprove any philosophical position. But in the absence of any conclusive evidence to the contrary, a dualistic position on consciousness is perfectly valid. Why not?!
There is no reason to get paranoid (as some people do) about it. For some people even suggesting a dualistic idea seems to be equivalent to pushing Jehovah or Allah down their throat....!! This could be a serious problem of phobia. It can create mental blocks that can be very serious impediments in understanding reality beyond science.
I am having a meaningful and open discussion on here after a long time Outrider. Receptivity is important. Thanks.
Cheers.
Sriram
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There is ample evidence for Consciousness being independent of the body.
Such as (citations would be useful)?
We should be mentally prepared to see it, that is all. Attitudes and mental blocks can be major hindrances in our understanding of certain phenomena. Even though we might believe that we are open to ideas if there is sufficient evidence, this is not always true.
If there really is 'evidence' that stands scrutiny it would not depend solely on people being 'mentally prepared' to accept what is cited, which sounds like a recipe for confirmation bias.
Evidence itself can be quite tricky.
It can be, and especially so when claimed without the support of a detailed underlying method that is mutually exclusive from the subjective hopes and preferences of people to whom any such 'evidence' has personal appeal and approval.
Why should there not be a 'why'? Merely because science says so?! That is not correct.
You're misrepresenting science here, which doesn't ask 'why' questions that don't also involve 'how' along the way.
We don't have to presume a consciousness. It is there for all to experience. Duality is a very common philosophical position because that is what life and death seem to indicate. NDE's add to this argument. There must be a very good reason not to accept dualism. Science is yet to provide any such reason.
You're begging the question again.
I agree that it is not the obligation of science to disprove any philosophical position. But in the absence of any conclusive evidence to the contrary, a dualistic position on consciousness is perfectly valid. Why not?!
Because your approach here is just another example of the NPF, and fails as an argument on that basis.
There is no reason to get paranoid (as some people do) about it. For some people even suggesting a dualistic idea seems to be equivalent to pushing Jehovah or Allah down their throat....!! This could be a serious problem of phobia. It can create mental blocks that can be very serious impediments in understanding reality beyond science.
Nobody is paranoid: it is just that your approach to dualism seems to involve exactly the same range of fallacies that are deployed by some theists.
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Yeah...the mind has many layers. It is like software. From Machine code to assembler to higher languages there are many levels. No doubt, babies are born with some sort of a basic Operating system. But that cannot really be called mind because there is no thought or self awareness. These gets built later as the babies grow. The Personality forms as self awareness and ego develops.
That's a simplistic failure to understand the nature of mind, born of your habit of reaching for simple computer software analogies. All babies have minds, all creatures have minds, just because their stage of cognitive development is less than that of an adult human thinking abstract thoughts, or just because their self awareness is limited, it does not mean they do not have minds. Without a mind they would be dead in no time.
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This consciousness is what we are essentially. It is around this consciousness or self or subject, that the personality and mind get built as we grow. And it is this consciousness that we believe, leaves the body at the point of death.
Makes no sense.
Your consciousness cannot 'leave' anything, it is not a thing, it is an event, a process. To up sticks and go places it must have its own ontology, it must be made of something, it must have coordinates in spacetime.
I am looking at my laptop screen now, I am conscious of it, the visual sensory experience i am enjoying is part of the contents of my conscious experience right here, right now. That cannot 'go' somewhere, it is an event taking place here and now as information deriving originally from the screen cascades through cortical structures of my occipital lobe.
If my consciousness were able to get up and go somewhere else, then perhaps the Brexit referendum would be able to go and spend the weekend in Ibiza; we would be able take photosynthesis and put in a jam jar somewhere. If it's going to get cold at night, perhaps we could just take some of the flames from the fire and keep them in the bedroom.
We cannot relocate a process or an event as if it were a thing, it makes no sense.
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Makes no sense.
Your consciousness cannot 'leave' anything, it is not a thing, it is an event, a process. To up sticks and go places it must have its own ontology, it must be made of something, it must have coordinates in spacetime.
It maybe that Sriram is using 'leave' as a figure of speech as I think Hindu philosophy sees consciousness more as a universal essence which underlies and permeates life forms. It is not so much that it leaves that form but more that the 'form' leaves it once attachment is broken. It would not be described as a 'thing, nor an event, nor a process' but more as that which is capable of being aware of things, events and processes. As such, it cannot be objectified nor subjectified but by dropping all attachments to objectivity and subjectivity it can be realised, which I believe is called samadhi.
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Sriram,
I am glad you realize that there is a tendency to tar secular philosophy also with the same brush as mythological beliefs. That's more than what most others understand.
Then stop doing it. If you want to dilute the term “philosophy” such that it includes your folk beliefs, then you must allow the same term to any other folk beliefs.
Unfortunately, the West…
Oh dear...
…has not been exposed to secular philosophy (till recent years) in the same working manner that is common in India. Indian philosophy (Vedanta, Yoga, Samkhya) are not idle intellectual musings. They are living models that can be practiced and followed to see the reality for oneself.
Utter balls. “The West” has been practicing “secular philosophy” for a very long time. Have you never heard of Aristotle or Plato?
The essence of Indian philosophy is practice and more practice. And there is no fanatical zeal to push any idea. Its all left to ones own initiative. Don't accept it?
...no problem!
Then it’s not philosophy. Philosophy concerns robust reasoning, not repeating the same practice over and over again and then conflating the altered mind state it gives you with objective facts about the world.
Of course, Philosophy does make claims about reality! Science is nothing but a subset of philosophy that follows a certain specific methodology. Nothing more. This type of methodology is fine in specific areas of study but will not work everywhere. There are many aspects of reality that are outside the boundary that science has fixed for itself.
How do you know that unqualified assertion to be true?
As I keep saying, Science is like a microscope. A microscope works fine in certain areas but cannot be used for everything.
And as you keep being corrected, no it isn’t. You analogy implies that there’s lots of stuff to be seen that the "microscope" can’t identify. That may or may not be true, but you have no basis whatever to demonstrate it to be true.
There is ample evidence for Consciousness being independent of the body.
For example?
We should be mentally prepared to see it, that is all. Attitudes and mental blocks can be major hindrances in our understanding of certain phenomena. Even though we might believe that we are open to ideas if there is sufficient evidence, this is not always true. Evidence itself can be quite tricky.
So no evidence at all then. Funny that.
Why should there not be a 'why'?
He didn’t say there should not be a why. What he said was that there cannot be a why unless you can establish first a “something” to decide what it is.
Merely because science says so?! That is not correct.
No, it’s a straw man (one of many you attempt). Science doesn’t say that at all – logic does. See above.
We don't have to presume a consciousness. It is there for all to experience. Duality is a very common philosophical position because that is what life and death seem to indicate. NDE's add to this argument. There must be a very good reason not to accept dualism. Science is yet to provide any such reason.
There is a very good reason not to accept dualism – it relies on a description of consciousness that fundamentally contradicts all the evidence we have for what it is and how it operates. It's evidence that tells us that consciousness is an emergent property, a process that arises from the vast complexity from the physical stuff of brains. Just as ocean waves and flocks of birds are emergent phenomena, there’s no good reason to think that consciousness isn't too. If you seriously want to argue for dualism (as opposed to just assert it) then you have a massive task to define it, set its parameters, identify and test the conjecture.
Consciousness is an enigma. Science merely assumes that it is a product of physical processes. Fine. But as you say, science hasn't yet proven any materialistic origin to consciousness and therefore the dualistic position is also a perfectly valid philosophical position.
Science assumes no such thing. What science (and logic) actually do is to posit explanatory models that accord with all the evidence we have so far. What you do is to dismiss that out of hand, then use your incredulity to assert an alternative for which you have no evidence of any kind.
I agree that it is not the obligation of science to disprove any philosophical position.
Then why argue that it should have done if your various unqualified and unsupported assertions were false?
But in the absence of any conclusive evidence to the contrary, a dualistic position on consciousness is perfectly valid. Why not?!
For the same reason that a dualistic position on natural phenomena and leprechauns causing rainbows isn’t a valid position. There isn’t “conclusive” evidence for anything – that’s why in science theories have to be falsifiable if counter-evidence ever arises – but there is evidence that’s persuasive enough provisionally to be accepted as “true”, both for rainbows and for consciousness. Why you would dismiss that evidence for an alternative that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of consciousness and for which you have precisely zero evidence is anyone’s guess, but continuing with the effort is doing you no favours here.
There is no reason to get paranoid (as some people do) about it.
No-one does that, at least not here.
For some people even suggesting a dualistic idea seems to be equivalent to pushing Jehovah or Allah down their throat....!! This could be a serious problem of phobia. It can create mental blocks that can be very serious impediments in understanding reality beyond science.
Another straw man. You can suggest anything you like, as can I. Where you consistently go wrong though is to overreach by privileging your suggestion (ie, guess) as being deserving of serious consideration without first putting in the hard yards of a definition, of a method of investigation, of evidence, of testable predictions, of anything.
Tell us, “all that evidence science has amassed is well and good but I like to guess at other possibilities too” and no-one would care. Indeed arguably science itself begins with guesses that are then investigated and either rejected, amended or accepted. Your problem though is that you begin and end with the guess, but claim for it an epistemic status that’s entirely unwarranted. You then compound the problem by just ignoring the corrections you’re given so as to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
I am having a meaningful and open discussion on here after a long time Outrider. Receptivity is important. Thanks.
No you’re not – you’re just continuing to ignore anything that undoes you and regurgitating exactly the same errors in reasoning that you’ve tried countless times already.
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Makes no sense.
Your consciousness cannot 'leave' anything, it is not a thing, it is an event, a process. To up sticks and go places it must have its own ontology, it must be made of something, it must have coordinates in spacetime.
I am looking at my laptop screen now, I am conscious of it, the visual sensory experience i am enjoying is part of the contents of my conscious experience right here, right now. That cannot 'go' somewhere, it is an event taking place here and now as information deriving originally from the screen cascades through cortical structures of my occipital lobe.
If my consciousness were able to get up and go somewhere else, then perhaps the Brexit referendum would be able to go and spend the weekend in Ibiza; we would be able take photosynthesis and put in a jam jar somewhere. If it's going to get cold at night, perhaps we could just take some of the flames from the fire and keep them in the bedroom.
We cannot relocate a process or an event as if it were a thing, it makes no sense.
torridon,
That is just what you believe. You think that consciousness is just the result of a process. Life is the result of a process and so on... Fine..!
I don't think so. I think Life and Consciousness are independent of the physical body and its processes. Once Consciousness (Life) enters the body, only then all bodily processes start. Like a man getting into a car. Or someone sitting in front of a computer and starting it up.
That is my philosophy....you could even call it a hypothesis....
Cheers.
Sriram
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Sriram,
That is just what you believe. You think that consciousness is just the result of a process. Life is the result of a process and so on... Fine..!
No, it's what the only available evidence indicates.
I don't think so.
Then you prefer no evidence over evidence.
I think Life and Consciousness are independent of the physical body and its processes.
Why?
Once Consciousness (Life) enters the body, only then all bodily processes start. Like a man getting into a car. Or someone sitting in front of a computer and starting it up.
And once leprechauns run out of gold they magic pots of the stuff at the ends of rainbows. See, each of us can just assert logic- and evidence-free beliefs to be facts but there's no good reason for anyone to take either of us seriously when we do.
That is my philosophy....
No it isn't - it's just mindless guessing. If you want to call it "philosophy" then so is any other mindless guessing about anything else.
...you could even call it a hypothesis....
But only if you so corrupt the term "hypothesis" that it also means any other unqualified guess. Fortunately that's not what it means though.
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Fortunately, blue....reality does not change because of what we believe. It is not faith based. So, regardless of your beliefs, you will have an after-life...reincarnation...spiritual development.... and eventual freedom. Not to worry! :)
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Sriram,
Fortunately, blue....reality does not change because of what we believe.
I agree.
It is not faith based.
In the absence of logic or evidence to support your claims they are precisely faith based.
So, regardless of your beliefs, you will have an after-life...reincarnation...spiritual development.... and eventual freedom. Not to worry!
Those are indeed your faith beliefs. Now try reading your fist sentence again.
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It would not be described as a 'thing, nor an event, nor a process' but more as that which is capable of being aware of things, events and processes.
If consciousness (awareness) is 'that which is capable of being aware' then process and basis become one and the same. By the same token we might say that breathing is that which is capable of breathing, which is absurd.
I'm reminded of something written by the biochemist Jaques Monod: “All religions, nearly all philosophies, and even a part of science testify to the unwearying, heroic effort of mankind desperately denying its contingency.” This 'heroic effort' demands that there be some fundamental and eternal essence that is me. As I understand it, in Hinduism this is Atman, which (from Wikipedia) is considered as eternal, imperishable, beyond time, "not the same as body or mind or consciousness, but is something beyond which permeates all these". It's difficult to know whether this is what Sriram is talking about because he says 'consciousness is what we are essentially' and Atman (according to the above definition) is not the same as consciousness.
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Sriram,
PS As your recent posts have been as full of the same logical mistakes as your previous ones, why have you just ignored the (repeated) corrections you've been given? How do expect ever to learn anything if you just ignore your errors, or do you somehow think that a bad arguments somehow become good ones when you use them to justify your personal faith beliefs?
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Bramble,
If consciousness (awareness) is 'that which is capable of being aware' then process and basis become one and the same. By the same token we might say that breathing is that which is capable of breathing, which is absurd.
Isn't consciousness rather the awareness itself?
I'm reminded of something written by the biochemist Jaques Monod: “All religions, nearly all philosophies, and even a part of science testify to the unwearying, heroic effort of mankind desperately denying its contingency.” This 'heroic effort' demands that there be some fundamental and eternal essence that is me. As I understand it, in Hinduism this is Atman, which (from Wikipedia) is considered as eternal, imperishable, beyond time, "not the same as body or mind or consciousness, but is something beyond which permeates all these". It's difficult to know whether this is what Sriram is talking about because he says 'consciousness is what we are essentially' and Atman (according to the above definition) is not the same as consciousness.
It's very hard to know what Sriram does think because his reasoning is so hopeless (and inconsistent), but it seems to involve an imperishable "something" that he asserts to be capable of reincarnation - which would be aligned at least to "Atman".
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That is just what you believe. You think that consciousness is just the result of a process. Life is the result of a process and so on... Fine..!
it's not the result of a process. it is a process. Anyone can verify this for him/herself at home with the following experiment : open your eyes and look at something. Then close your eyes. What happened ? What you will find is that your seeing of the something started upon opening the eyes and that seeing then stopped when the eyes were closed. It is a process, not a thing. It is a phenomenological interaction happening between different parts of the cosmos that are in a mutual subject/object relationship. When that interaction stops happening, it is not that it has gone somewhere, it is that it has stopped happening. When a fire goes out, it is not because the flames have left and gone somewhere. The fire has stopped happening.
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Bramble,
Isn't consciousness rather the awareness itself?
Yes, exactly. That's why I queried ekim.
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It maybe that Sriram is using 'leave' as a figure of speech as I think Hindu philosophy sees consciousness more as a universal essence which underlies and permeates life forms. It is not so much that it leaves that form but more that the 'form' leaves it once attachment is broken. It would not be described as a 'thing, nor an event, nor a process' but more as that which is capable of being aware of things, events and processes. As such, it cannot be objectified nor subjectified but by dropping all attachments to objectivity and subjectivity it can be realised, which I believe is called samadhi.
I agree with both Bramble and Blue. The generally accepted definition of consciousness is awareness, a quality which is present in many(if not all) animal species, and all evidence suggests that it is a product of the mind. Self awareness is a more advanced form of consciousness present in several animal species as far as we can tell, including, of course, human beings.
What you seem to be talking about, when mentioning samadhi, is a heightened sense/state of awareness, as far as I can tell, which can be achieved by a variety of methods, including by using meditation techniques.
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If consciousness (awareness) is 'that which is capable of being aware' then process and basis become one and the same. By the same token we might say that breathing is that which is capable of breathing, which is absurd.
I'm reminded of something written by the biochemist Jaques Monod: “All religions, nearly all philosophies, and even a part of science testify to the unwearying, heroic effort of mankind desperately denying its contingency.” This 'heroic effort' demands that there be some fundamental and eternal essence that is me. As I understand it, in Hinduism this is Atman, which (from Wikipedia) is considered as eternal, imperishable, beyond time, "not the same as body or mind or consciousness, but is something beyond which permeates all these". It's difficult to know whether this is what Sriram is talking about because he says 'consciousness is what we are essentially' and Atman (according to the above definition) is not the same as consciousness.
I think consciousness and awareness are much the same. The former is Latin based and the latter Germanic based. I could have said consciousness is that which is being conscious (and I'll add the words you snipped off) of things events and processes i.e. consciousness is the subject 'I' (or to use your word Atman) and the rest are subjective forms and forces like concepts, mental images and emotions, and objective forms and forces like physical bodies. There are a variety of schools of thought in India and so there may be a variety of ways of expressing what I have said. Brahman is the universal consciousness/essence and Atman is identical in nature. Realisation of this is said to occur when there is a merging following the dropping of attachments which go to make up the false identity Ahamkara (ego/self).
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it's not the result of a process. it is a process. Anyone can verify this for him/herself at home with the following experiment : open your eyes and look at something. Then close your eyes. What happened ? What you will find is that your seeing of the something started upon opening the eyes and that seeing then stopped when the eyes were closed. It is a process, not a thing. It is a phenomenological interaction happening between different parts of the cosmos that are in a mutual subject/object relationship. When that interaction stops happening, it is not that it has gone somewhere, it is that it has stopped happening. When a fire goes out, it is not because the flames have left and gone somewhere. The fire has stopped happening.
torridon,
Ok...so you think of consciousness as a process. Fine! But I don't.
I think of Consciousness as an entity (don't ask me what it is, how it smells, tastes, its constituent matter etc....I don't know) of some kind. It is the essence of Life itself. Consciousness is just a new word that people like Chalmers and others use to refer to the inner subject or the Self. The essence of subjectivity. I am using it in the same way to refer to the Self (or as ekim says...the Atman....I don't want to use too many Sanskrit words here. You people are put off by English words often enough already...!!!)
Processes don't happen by themselves. Consciousness initiates the process that results in functional interactions.
For example,the process that happens inside a computer that enables us to interact with one another is initiated by the User . The process doesn't happen by itself. The computer exists only for and because of the user and not by itself.
Without a human user, a computer will not exist. Similarly, without a Conscious Self, the body will not exist. This is my view. There is nothing in the discoveries of science that makes me discard this view. In fact, NDE's, findings of Jim Tucker, Philosophies of Panpsychism, Max Planck's view, Copenhagen Interpretation of QM, Participatory Anthropic Principle and many other things only reinforce my view.
Cheers.
Sriram
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torridon,
Ok...so you think of consciousness as a process. Fine! But I don't.
I think of Consciousness as an entity (don't ask me what it is, how it smells, tastes, its constituent matter etc....I don't know) of some kind. It is the essence of Life itself. Consciousness is just a new word that people like Chalmers and others use to refer to the inner subject or the Self. The essence of subjectivity. I am using it in the same way to refer to the Self (or as ekim says...the Atman....I don't want to use too many Sanskrit words here. You people are put off by English words often enough already...!!!)
Well it would help if you would stop misusing the vocabulary it causes confusion. This is what consciousness actually means:
consciousness
1.
the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.
"she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later"
synonyms: awareness, wakefulness, alertness, responsiveness, sentience
"she failed to regain consciousness"
2.
a person's awareness or perception of something.
"her acute consciousness of Luke's presence"
synonyms: awareness of, knowledge of the existence of, alertness to, sensitivity to, realization of, cognizance of, mindfulness of, perception of, apprehension of, recognition of
"her acute consciousness of Luke's presence"
There is nothing in the dictionary definition of the word to validate your notion that it is an entity. It is a (typically wakeful) state of mind. If you are going to conscript 'consciousness' to mean 'inner self' or 'spirit' then you would need to invent another word to describe the state of wakefulness that is the word's correct meaning. All in the interests of clarity and the avoidance of confusion, you see.
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Processes don't happen by themselves. Consciousness initiates the process that results in functional interactions.
For example,the process that happens inside a computer that enables us to interact with one another is initiated by the User . The process doesn't happen by itself. The computer exists only for and because of the user and not by itself.
Typical avoidance strategy. Avoidance of dealing with reality. Where we could be trying to understand how stuff works, this fails by introducing 'user' to contain all the mysterious stuff we don't understand and skipping lightly over the fact that it conceals the depth of our ignorance. It is just an appeal to magic and fantasy beliefs should not be a proper substitute for real understanding born of hard work and meticulous research.
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You can think of Consciousness as an entity or as a 'thing' of some kind or as the characteristic of the entity or thing. It doesn't matter which. Microscopic hair splitting doesn't help in such abstract matters. I think I have been quite clear that I am talking of the subjective Self that occupies the body.....like a computer user or a person driving a car.
When Max Planck says...'I regard Consciousness as fundamental' or 'I regard matter as derivative from Consciousness' ....
Or David Chalmers says...'According to panpsychism, consciousness may be a fundamental property of reality in the same way as space and time. "We're not going to reduce consciousness to something physical ... it's a primitive component of the universe," he said.
I think they mean it in the same sense as I do. Its just a word....don't let it get to you. Please try to understand what I am saying.
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Typical avoidance strategy. Avoidance of dealing with reality. Where we could be trying to understand how stuff works, this fails by introducing 'user' to contain all the mysterious stuff we don't understand and skipping lightly over the fact that it conceals the depth of our ignorance. It is just an appeal to magic and fantasy beliefs should not be a proper substitute for real understanding born of hard work and meticulous research.
Why 'magic'? The subject is a reality. Why do you call it magic?!!
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You can think of Consciousness as an entity or as a 'thing' of some kind or as the characteristic of the entity or thing. It doesn't matter which. Microscopic hair splitting doesn't help in such abstract matters. I think I have been quite clear that I am talking of the subjective Self that occupies the body.....like a computer user or a person driving a car.
When Max Planck says...'I regard Consciousness as fundamental' or 'I regard matter as derivative from Consciousness' ....
Or David Chalmers says...'According to panpsychism, consciousness may be a fundamental property of reality in the same way as space and time. "We're not going to reduce consciousness to something physical ... it's a primitive component of the universe," he said.
I think they mean it in the same sense as I do. Its just a word....don't let it get to you. Please try to understand what I am saying.
What you call microscopic hair splitting I might call attention to detail and it is attention to detail that is at the core of scientific thinking and it is this way of thinking that has given us antibiotics and automobiles and refrigerators. We need to pay attention to detail, sloppy thinking never produced a vaccine or landed a spacecraft on a distant asteroid. And it is sloppy thinking to casually conscript the ideas of Chalmers et al to support notions of spiritual beings and karma and reincarnation etc. Chalmers suggestion that matter may have a phenomenological aspect is a million miles away from notions of a complex sentient being inhabiting a body in the manner of a driver inhabiting his vehicle. I am a sentient conscious being, that is a complex thing, and we cannot say that a fundamental universal primitive, supposing Chalmers is right, is also a complex bounded particular instance of a sentient entity. The complex derives from the primitive, it is not the same thing as the primitive. The life sciences have given us insight into how that sense of self arises in a body as it develops and matures, and I see no good reason to casually disregard all that knowledge in favour of the simple superstitious beliefs from earlier times. It is a rejection of the value of education, and of the value of scientific knowledge.
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What you call microscopic hair splitting I might call attention to detail and it is attention to detail that is at the core of scientific thinking and it is this way of thinking that has given us antibiotics and automobiles and refrigerators. We need to pay attention to detail, sloppy thinking never produced a vaccine or landed a spacecraft on a distant asteroid. And it is sloppy thinking to casually conscript the ideas of Chalmers et al to support notions of spiritual beings and karma and reincarnation etc. Chalmers suggestion that matter may have a phenomenological aspect is a million miles away from notions of a complex sentient being inhabiting a body in the manner of a driver inhabiting his vehicle. I am a sentient conscious being, that is a complex thing, and we cannot say that a fundamental universal primitive, supposing Chalmers is right, is also a complex bounded particular instance of a sentient entity. The complex derives from the primitive, it is not the same thing as the primitive. The life sciences have given us insight into how that sense of self arises in a body as it develops and matures, and I see no good reason to casually disregard all that knowledge in favour of the simple superstitious beliefs from earlier times. It is a rejection of the value of education, of the value of scientific knowledge.
Consciousness or the Self is the subject itself. It is not an object that can be observed and analysed. So hair splitting doesn't help.
I am not using Chalmers or anyone else to further my ideas. My ideas are there already. But ideas seem to be converging. Eventually reality has to be seen as it is regardless of which side you see it from. That is what will happen. Truth will out!
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Eventually reality has to be seen as it is regardless of which side you see it from.
It doesn't actually, but regardless, the only way we have any chance of reaching the truth of the matter is by evidence and sound reasoning, not the kind of sloppy thinking, hand-waving, and empty assertions that you peddle.
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Eventually reality has to be seen as it is regardless of which side you see it from.
The problem there, Sriram, is that if reality is seen from different 'sides' then either reality is more complex that any one 'side' envisages or it may be that the perspective of any one 'side', since there would be more than one, could be incomplete or simply wrong - as was the case for Phlogiston advocates before Lavoisier helped kick their 'side' into touch.
Truth will out!
Possibly, but only if there is a reliable basis to identify what is likely to be true and what probably isn't, like Phlogiston: and even then it would be intellectually healthy to regard all 'truths' as being provisional.
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The problem there, Sriram, is that if reality is seen from different 'sides' then either reality is more complex that any one 'side' envisages or it may be that the perspective of any one 'side', since there would be more than one, could be incomplete or simply wrong - as was the case for Phlogiston advocates before Lavoisier helped kick their 'side' into touch.
Possibly, but only if there is a reliable basis to identify what is likely to be true and what probably isn't, like Phlogiston: and even then it would be intellectually healthy to regard all 'truths' as being provisional.
Gordon,
I agree. You could be right. Maybe we will never ever have a complete and comprehensive understanding of reality. Maybe our brains are not made for that. We try to understand things just because we have a need to understand and control....just like any other need. Having a need does not mean that it will necessarily lead us to a complete understanding or complete control.
Life gets seeded and evolves spontaneously. No 'understanding' is required at any stage. It just happens. So, we will continue to evolve and develop without necessarily understanding why or how.
But regardless of that, since we have this need, we will keep trying to understand. And possibly there will be some kind of a convergence at some point wherein all diverse ideas and theories will come together, at least in a sketchy manner, so that we all can agree on what reality is and maybe at that point, we will also know the 'why'.
Cheers.
Sriram
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Gordon,
I agree. You could be right. Maybe we will never ever have a complete and comprehensive understanding of reality. Maybe our brains are not made for that. We try to understand things just because we have a need to understand and control....just like any other need. Having a need does not mean that it will necessarily lead us to a complete understanding or complete control.
Life gets seeded and evolves spontaneously. No 'understanding' is required at any stage. It just happens. So, we will continue to evolve and develop without necessarily understanding why or how.
But regardless of that, since we have this need, we will keep trying to understand. And possibly there will be some kind of a convergence at some point wherein all diverse ideas and theories will come together, at least in a sketchy manner, so that we all can agree on what reality is and maybe at that point, we will also know the 'why'.
Cheers.
Sriram
Sriram
Even if we get to a point where some, or even most, things are reasonably well understood there still remains the risk of unknown unknowns, so that we may be required to revise our understandings: but that doesn't mean that 'why', if asked to imply there is an underlying purpose involved, is a always a valid question since it presumes that 'why' is always an answerable question.
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Well it would help if you would stop misusing the vocabulary it causes confusion. This is what consciousness actually means:
consciousness
1.
the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings.
"she failed to regain consciousness and died two days later"
synonyms: awareness, wakefulness, alertness, responsiveness, sentience
"she failed to regain consciousness"
2.
a person's awareness or perception of something.
"her acute consciousness of Luke's presence"
synonyms: awareness of, knowledge of the existence of, alertness to, sensitivity to, realization of, cognizance of, mindfulness of, perception of, apprehension of, recognition of
"her acute consciousness of Luke's presence"
There is nothing in the dictionary definition of the word to validate your notion that it is an entity. It is a (typically wakeful) state of mind. If you are going to conscript 'consciousness' to mean 'inner self' or 'spirit' then you would need to invent another word to describe the state of wakefulness that is the word's correct meaning. All in the interests of clarity and the avoidance of confusion, you see.
The dictionary definition seems imply a 'state' of being i.e. something static and yet responsive, perhaps as one could think of a placid lake being static yet responsive to a stone being thrown into it. I think the yogic path is not an externalised analytical one but an internalised one of inner discovery where inner stillness (the 'static' aspect) is central and the responsiveness is peripheral. The Sanskrit words used, I think, are intended to communicate a way of guiding initiates along an inner path of 'Self/Atman' discovery rather than a scientific or psychoanalytical approach.
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The trouble with conflating consciousness and self and imagining it to be an entity of the eternal, imperishable sort required of the Hindu Atman, is that both consciousness and self are clearly dependently arising phenomena. For them to have the qualities ascribed to Atman they would have to be self-established.
If you look for consciousness you find only its objects because that’s what consciousness is - awareness, the appearance of a world, experience. It isn’t a thing in itself. Consciousness arises based on the coming together of necessary conditions and disappears when those conditions are absent. The same applies to the sense of self.
Selfhood is part of the virtual model of reality of which consciousness is a necessary component, and like consciousness the first person perspective is not based on an entity. Self is not inherent in consciousness because experience is possible without any sense of self.
It’s quite easy to disrupt the first person perspective, for instance through meditation, taking mind altering drugs, or applying strong magnetic fields to the brain. Certain kinds of mental trauma and disfunction may render sufferers devoid of a sense of self but they remain conscious. But even in normal life our sense of self waxes and wanes, often disappearing altogether during periods in which there is just awareness without any sense of there being a me who ‘has’ that awareness.
Talking about the self is difficult because the word is so loaded with assumptions and preconceptions and we can mean different things by it. The innate subjective sense of self can disappear altogether during unconscious periods, as when under a general anaesthetic, but conventionally we would still think of the anaesthetised person as having a self, even if it is currently ‘unavailable’.
Much of our view of self is confused and contradictory because there isn’t an underlying unitary and unchanging thing that is us. We have a sense of personal continuity that enables us to function but we recognise that we are also subject to constant change. Our understanding of self is a little like St Augustine’s understanding of time - if we’re not asked about it we feel sure we know what it is but when we are called upon to explain it we find that we don’t. That’s because we have the sense that there is a ‘me’ inside that is running the show but when we look for it we find no such thing. This can be unsettling and people understandably often look for some kind of solid ground to stand on, hence the need to locate something within us (such as consciousness) to which can be ascribed eternal selfhood. No doubt there will always be a market for eternal life and (for those so inclined) a basis for redemption, infinite personal growth or some other form of hero quest that confers meaning and purpose where otherwise there would be only emptiness.
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Good stuff Bramble, no dispute from me there
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The trouble with conflating consciousness and self and imagining it to be an entity of the eternal, imperishable sort required of the Hindu Atman, is that both consciousness and self are clearly dependently arising phenomena. For them to have the qualities ascribed to Atman they would have to be self-established.
If you look for consciousness you find only its objects because that’s what consciousness is - awareness, the appearance of a world, experience. It isn’t a thing in itself. Consciousness arises based on the coming together of necessary conditions and disappears when those conditions are absent. The same applies to the sense of self.
Selfhood is part of the virtual model of reality of which consciousness is a necessary component, and like consciousness the first person perspective is not based on an entity. Self is not inherent in consciousness because experience is possible without any sense of self.
It’s quite easy to disrupt the first person perspective, for instance through meditation, taking mind altering drugs, or applying strong magnetic fields to the brain. Certain kinds of mental trauma and disfunction may render sufferers devoid of a sense of self but they remain conscious. But even in normal life our sense of self waxes and wanes, often disappearing altogether during periods in which there is just awareness without any sense of there being a me who ‘has’ that awareness.
Talking about the self is difficult because the word is so loaded with assumptions and preconceptions and we can mean different things by it. The innate subjective sense of self can disappear altogether during unconscious periods, as when under a general anaesthetic, but conventionally we would still think of the anaesthetised person as having a self, even if it is currently ‘unavailable’.
Much of our view of self is confused and contradictory because there isn’t an underlying unitary and unchanging thing that is us. We have a sense of personal continuity that enables us to function but we recognise that we are also subject to constant change. Our understanding of self is a little like St Augustine’s understanding of time - if we’re not asked about it we feel sure we know what it is but when we are called upon to explain it we find that we don’t. That’s because we have the sense that there is a ‘me’ inside that is running the show but when we look for it we find no such thing. This can be unsettling and people understandably often look for some kind of solid ground to stand on, hence the need to locate something within us (such as consciousness) to which can be ascribed eternal selfhood. No doubt there will always be a market for eternal life and (for those so inclined) a basis for redemption, infinite personal growth or some other form of hero quest that confers meaning and purpose where otherwise there would be only emptiness.
Agreed, Bramble. It makes good sense to me although I doubt whether Sriram or Ekim will find it convincing.
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Sriram,
I think of Consciousness as an entity (don't ask me what it is, how it smells, tastes, its constituent matter etc....
You have just told us that you think there to be an "entity" but you have precisely zero information about that entity. Thus epistemologically there is no difference between the state "entity" and the state "no entity".
You do realise that you did that right?
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(1) The trouble with conflating consciousness and self and imagining it to be an entity of the eternal, imperishable sort required of the Hindu Atman, is that both consciousness and self are clearly dependently arising phenomena. For them to have the qualities ascribed to Atman they would have to be self-established.
(2) If you look for consciousness you find only its objects because that’s what consciousness is - awareness, the appearance of a world, experience. It isn’t a thing in itself. Consciousness arises based on the coming together of necessary conditions and disappears when those conditions are absent. The same applies to the sense of self.
(3) Selfhood is part of the virtual model of reality of which consciousness is a necessary component, and like consciousness the first person perspective is not based on an entity. Self is not inherent in consciousness because experience is possible without any sense of self.
(4) It’s quite easy to disrupt the first person perspective, for instance through meditation, taking mind altering drugs, or applying strong magnetic fields to the brain. Certain kinds of mental trauma and disfunction may render sufferers devoid of a sense of self but they remain conscious. But even in normal life our sense of self waxes and wanes, often disappearing altogether during periods in which there is just awareness without any sense of there being a me who ‘has’ that awareness.
(5) Talking about the self is difficult because the word is so loaded with assumptions and preconceptions and we can mean different things by it. The innate subjective sense of self can disappear altogether during unconscious periods, as when under a general anaesthetic, but conventionally we would still think of the anaesthetised person as having a self, even if it is currently ‘unavailable’.
(6) Much of our view of self is confused and contradictory because there isn’t an underlying unitary and unchanging thing that is us. We have a sense of personal continuity that enables us to function but we recognise that we are also subject to constant change. Our understanding of self is a little like St Augustine’s understanding of time - if we’re not asked about it we feel sure we know what it is but when we are called upon to explain it we find that we don’t. That’s because we have the sense that there is a ‘me’ inside that is running the show but when we look for it we find no such thing. This can be unsettling and people understandably often look for some kind of solid ground to stand on, hence the need to locate something within us (such as consciousness) to which can be ascribed eternal selfhood. No doubt there will always be a market for eternal life and (for those so inclined) a basis for redemption, infinite personal growth or some other form of hero quest that confers meaning and purpose where otherwise there would be only emptiness.
I'll comment on what you say, not because I disagree, but to put the other point of view and perhaps keep the discussion going without it descending into the usual exchange of ad homina.
(1) The yogi would likely say, don't conflate, don't imagine. Atman is free of qualities. It is just consciousness or awareness pure and simple, but it does have levels.
(2) The yogi would likely say, don't look for consciousness otherwise your mind will jump to those conclusions. Inner stillness is required rather than inner turmoil.
(3) The yogi would likely say, a reasonable statement but the path is about transcending any virtual model of the self which the mind wants to create.
(4) The yogi would likely say, mind altering drugs and such like are just that, mind altering and should be avoided. Meditation, or dhyana as we like to call it, is a method used to transcend the mind and its embedded notion of self rather than alter it.
(5) The yogi would likely say, if 'talking about self is difficult' why do so many people frequently indulge in it? .... Perhaps because they are self obsessed and the times when that is not observably evident is when their consciousness does not appear to be observably present.
(6) The yogi would likely say, mental confusion is what needs to be transcended rather than added to and explanations only serve to confuse more, as does the desire to locate something imagined within us. A hero quest is another form of self worship and is better avoided. Whether the end result is one of emptiness or fullness, loss or fulfilment, might be questions that the mind wrestles with, but perhaps from a position of inner stillness all questions will be resolved.
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This yogi sounds like a slippery bugger. You sure he's not a politician?
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This yogi sounds like a slippery bugger. You sure he's not a politician?
Ah, Grasshopper, do not despise the serpent because he has no teeth for who is to say he will not become a dragon.
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Consciousness or the Self is the subject itself. It is not an object that can be observed and analysed. So hair splitting doesn't help.
I am not using Chalmers or anyone else to further my ideas. My ideas are there already. But ideas seem to be converging. Eventually reality has to be seen as it is regardless of which side you see it from. That is what will happen. Truth will out!
If you think there is a convergence happening between science and ancient philosophies around reincarnation then you are mistaken.
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If you think there is a convergence happening between science and ancient philosophies around reincarnation then you are mistaken.
Why? What makes you think so?!
Convergence is not a small, one time thing. It will happen slowly and is probably an ongoing process. As long as we are able to arrive at a common philosophical base, that should be enough IMO. The nitty gritty will be difficult to integrate.
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Consciousness or the Self is the subject itself. It is not an object that can be observed and analysed. So hair splitting doesn't help.
I am not using Chalmers or anyone else to further my ideas. My ideas are there already. But ideas seem to be converging. Eventually reality has to be seen as it is regardless of which side you see it from. That is what will happen. Truth will out!
If you think there is a convergence happening between science and ancient philosophies around reincarnation then you are mistaken. We'd have to put that down to an illusion in your head. Ancient teachings do not evolve or grow particularly, modern interpreters might try to accommodate the findings of science within them, is all. Science does continue to grow however unencumbered by legacy beliefs from the ancient past. You might as well try to claim that there is a 'convergence' between creationism and evolutionary biology, which, also, there isn't. Nothing in QM endorses notions of disembodied spirits. Nothing in Chalmer's suggestion that matter might be inherently sentient endorses notions of afterlife. In fact, rather than converging, it does the opposite; the proposition that matter itself is inherently sentient leaves no need for the proposition of disembodied sentience somehow climbing in a body at birth to animate it and leaving it at death to find another body to animate. If sentience is a fundamental property of matter then unembodied sentience makes no sense.
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If you think there is a convergence happening between science and ancient philosophies around reincarnation then you are mistaken. We'd have to put that down to an illusion in your head. Ancient teachings do not evolve or grow particularly, modern interpreters might try to accommodate the findings of science within them, is all. Science does continue to grow however unencumbered by legacy beliefs from the ancient past. You might as well try to claim that there is a 'convergence' between creationism and evolutionary biology, which, also, there isn't. Nothing in QM endorses notions of disembodied spirits. Nothing in Chalmer's suggestion that matter might be inherently sentient endorses notions of afterlife. In fact, rather than converging, it does the opposite; the proposition that matter itself is inherently sentient leaves no need for the proposition of disembodied sentience somehow climbing in a body at birth to animate it and leaving it at death to find another body to animate. If sentience is a fundamental property of matter then unembodied sentience makes no sense.
First of all...in Hindu philosophy there no emphasis on the 'ancient'. Some communities do give importance to ancient writings. The more ancient something is the more authentic it is perceived. Not in Hinduism. In fact, current writings and philosophical ideas are are often more important than ancient texts. Views of present day Yogis are valued more than historical ones.
Why you are getting into a tizzy trying to put together Chalmers ideas and reincarnation, I don't understand. Reincarnation is something Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker or the University of Virginia have documented. Refer to that.
https://uvamagazine.org/articles/the_science_of_reincarnation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La8vG4mA0is
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Why you are getting into a tizzy trying to put together Chalmers ideas and reincarnation, I don't understand. Reincarnation is something Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker or the University of Virginia have documented. Refer to that.
https://uvamagazine.org/articles/the_science_of_reincarnation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La8vG4mA0is
iirc you mentioned these guys before before: psychiatrists who interviewed a few children and then started wittering about 'quantum' based on anecdotes. What do proper qualified quantum scientists say about his ideas?
As former head of the department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, Stevenson's early reputation as a careful researcher caused his later reincarnation writings to be given some attention in academic circles. Despite this early interest, the vast majority of scientists came to see him as "earnest, dogged but ultimately misguided, led astray by gullibility, wishful thinking and a tendency to see science where others saw superstition."
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson
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I am glad you realize that there is a tendency to tar secular philosophy also with the same brush as mythological beliefs. That's more than what most others understand. Unfortunately, the West has not been exposed to secular philosophy (till recent years) in the same working manner that is common in India. Indian philosophy (Vedanta, Yoga, Samkhya) are not idle intellectual musings. They are living models that can be practiced and followed to see the reality for oneself.
I appreciate that it may be my ignorance on the practices here, but although I'd heard that Samkhya was an atheist outlook, I thought Yoga presupposed a personal deity? And Vedanta has been pitched to me as a sort of 'catch-all' syncretism of the other major Hindu schools - I'm not saying that's right, just what I've heard about it.
The essence of Indian philosophy is practice and more practice. And there is no fanatical zeal to push any idea. Its all left to ones own initiative. Don't accept it?
...no problem!
As with any philosophy, that's your take on it perhaps, but I'm sure there are any number of people in India who might look at Mr Mohdi's take on Hindu nationalism and suggest that his philosophy is being rather more aggressively pushed.
Of course, Philosophy does make claims about reality! Science is nothing but a subset of philosophy that follows a certain specific methodology.
I'd say that Science isn't a subset of philosophy any more than, say, logic is. There are philosophical schools that accept it as a useful tool, but it's a method rather than a particular viewpoint. There is the associated 'scientism' view that ONLY science is a valid means of examining reality, but that's distinct from the practice of science itself.
This type of methodology is fine in specific areas of study but will not work everywhere.
Well that's the scientism argument, really. Science examines phenomena, so if you can perceive it reliably, science can investigate it. If you can't perceive it reliably, scientism argues, how can you be confident that it's actually there. Is anything truly beyond science's possibilities? Currently, of course, there are potentially huge swathes of reality that science cannot adequately explain, but is there anything 'real' that is in principal beyond scientific enquiry?
There are many aspects of reality that are outside the boundary that science has fixed for itself.
I'm not sure there are - I think there is a large proportion of those that look to scientism who don't see that there is, in principle, anything in reality that is beyond the realm of science.
As I keep saying, Science is like a microscope. A microscope works fine in certain areas but cannot be used for everything.
Why? The only things that I've heard people say are beyond science are the things that they, or at least a considerable number of others, say are issues beyond 'knowledge' and into the realms of faith.
There is ample evidence for Consciousness being independent of the body.
There are some experiences that, when examined, turn out not necessarily to be reliable.
We should be mentally prepared to see it, that is all. Attitudes and mental blocks can be major hindrances in our understanding of certain phenomena. Even though we might believe that we are open to ideas if there is sufficient evidence, this is not always true. Evidence itself can be quite tricky.
It can, but it seems to me that acceptance of many of these phenomena is to ignore reliable evidence in favour of personal experience (if you're lucky) or the acceptance of subjective personal testimony if the experience doesn't happen directly to you. We have any number of demonstrations that human perception is fundamentally unreliable in any number of ways, why would we rely so strongly on it in an area where the objective evidence is so overwhelmingly suggesting that there's nothing reliable their to measure?
Why should there not be a 'why'? Merely because science says so?!
Science doesn't say so, science - as you've pointed out - doesn't deal with 'why', science deals with how. Scientists, to some extent, philosophers - both those that adhere to scientism and others - ask 'why presume there is a reason' because there has been a history of circular reasoning to justify theism that presumes a why to presume a consciousness with wants to justify the why. We think in 'why' because we consider ourselves to be free-willed agencies, and we are the architects of our own perceived realities, but objective reality is objected precisely because it is not reliant on our perception of it - so without our need for a 'why', what is there in nature to suggest there is a 'why'?
That is not correct. We don't have to presume a consciousness. It is there for all to experience.
So those who claim to have experienced it will say, but I (for one) have not experienced it, so to presume there is a why doesn't satisfy that emotional need for self-justification. I have, however, perceived of sentient tomatoes chasing me down a hallway - a fever-dream in a particularly nasty bout of gastro-enteritis - but I don't presume my experience necessarily justifies presuming reality. I might be inclined to conduct further examinations, but it is at best a possibility until there's an external validation of it.
Duality is a very common philosophical position because that is what life and death seem to indicate.
I don't see that leap. Life is a process of energy exchanges conforming to a (currently not particularly well-defined) pattern, and consciousness is a subset of those energy exchanges conforming to an even less well-defined pattern. When the pattern of energy exchanges alters (i.e. we die) then the pattern no longer conforms to life or consciousness and we stop. I don't see a need for anything more in the system than that - I'm not definitively ruling it out from that understanding, but I'm equally not presuming that it's a part of the system that I can't understand because it doesn't add anything to my explanation except a need for more evidence and answers.
NDE's add to this argument.
I don't think they do. NDE's add to the experiences that require explanations, but there are perfectly good explanations that rely entirely on physical phenomena such as brain chemistry and neuron activity - they aren't proven, but they are conceptually sound. I guess there's a strong element of Occam's Razor in the argument.
There must be a very good reason not to accept dualism. Science is yet to provide any such reason.
Philosophy already has provided a very good reason. It's an unnecessary addition - we have a viable explanation without an independent 'spirit' component, so why add a complication with no reliable, independent evidence?
Consciousness is an enigma.
Ain't that the truth :)
Science merely assumes that it is a product of physical processes.
To be consistent, science presumes that EVERYTHING is a product of physical processes, it's part of the foundation of the conceptualisation of the scientific method. That is, potentially, a limitation, but that will only be a practical consideration at the point where someone comes up with as reliable a method for demonstrating non-physical elements of reality, and that hasn't happened yet.
But as you say, science hasn't yet proven any materialistic origin to consciousness and therefore the dualistic position is also a perfectly valid philosophical position.
I agree that it is not the obligation of science to disprove any philosophical position.
Science has, though, posited a conceptually valid understanding of consciousness - it needs considerably more evidence to upgrade it from the current 'hypothesis' to a full-blown theory of consciousness, but it's there to be challenged.
But in the absence of any conclusive evidence to the contrary, a dualistic position on consciousness is perfectly valid. Why not?!
The idea is valid, yes, but many, many ideas are valid (despite, in many cases, being mutually incompatible). We can't accept all of them, even given the human capacity for cognitive dissonance, so how do we choose which to accept? For instance, you appear to adopt a variant of a Hindu dualistic understanding of consciousness - this, as you say, is entirely valid. There is no conceivable way, as I understand, not just to validate that understanding in any reliable way, but even to suggest that there is grounds for choosing it over, say, a Catholic conception of dualism, or an Islamic one. My question doesn't come from the point of 'your conception is patently nonsense' because it isn't, there is an internal logic to it. My question comes from 'why do you choose that conception which has no evidentiary support and no prospect of ever being validated rather than one which does?'
There is no reason to get paranoid (as some people do) about it. For some people even suggesting a dualistic idea seems to be equivalent to pushing Jehovah or Allah down their throat....!! This could be a serious problem of phobia. It can create mental blocks that can be very serious impediments in understanding reality beyond science.
For those of us who live in cultures where the struggles between reason and faith (as opposed to arguments between faiths) have resulted in bloodshed, anything that's seen to validate or justify mysticism, spirituality or religion can be seen as a potential threat - if one unverifiable conceptualisation of dualism (your rather inoffensive Hindu concept of consciousness) can be accepted, how can another (the Islamic spiritual devotion to Allah) be contested?
Which raises the question - and this is perhaps a topic for another discussion - if the Islamic fundamentalists who perpetrated attacks such as the London Underground bombings feel like they're attacking 'Christendom' (for want of a better word) but those of us in an increasingly atheist Britain see this as a religious attack on a secular state, is it a battle between faiths or a battle between reason and faith?
I am having a meaningful and open discussion on here after a long time Outrider. Receptivity is important. Thanks.
I'd like to think I'm asking people to listen, so I do the same, otherwise we're all just shouting into the wind like a Daily Mail comment section, aren't we?
O.
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Why you are getting into a tizzy trying to put together Chalmers ideas and reincarnation, I don't understand. Reincarnation is something Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker or the University of Virginia have documented. Refer to that.
https://uvamagazine.org/articles/the_science_of_reincarnation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La8vG4mA0is
It's a kind of dishonesty to accuse people who disagree with you of being emotional or "getting into a tizzy". Why do you feel the need to do that?
The article includes a typical example of 'quantum quackery': waffle, waffle, hand-wave... 'observations' change things, therefore consciousness does... waffle, waffle, hand-wave... Max Planck! ... waffle, waffle, hand-wave... therefore <insert favourite woo here>.
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I appreciate that it may be my ignorance on the practices here, but although I'd heard that Samkhya was an atheist outlook, I thought Yoga presupposed a personal deity? And Vedanta has been pitched to me as a sort of 'catch-all' syncretism of the other major Hindu schools - I'm not saying that's right, just what I've heard about it.
Samkhya is atheistic in the sense that it thinks of individual souls getting freed of bondage without any common goal. Yoga and Vedanta do talk of a supreme soul that individual souls merge into but there is no deity that needs to be worshipped. It is about individual souls achieving a state of divinity through knowledge and practice.
As with any philosophy, that's your take on it perhaps, but I'm sure there are any number of people in India who might look at Mr Mohdi's take on Hindu nationalism and suggest that his philosophy is being rather more aggressively pushed.
Modi is merely bringing in a new wave of nationalism and pride....which was bound to happen given the overdone minoritism and Political Correctness of the past. It has nothing to do with Hindu philosophy.
I'd say that Science isn't a subset of philosophy any more than, say, logic is. There are philosophical schools that accept it as a useful tool, but it's a method rather than a particular viewpoint. There is the associated 'scientism' view that ONLY science is a valid means of examining reality, but that's distinct from the practice of science itself.
Well that's the scientism argument, really. Science examines phenomena, so if you can perceive it reliably, science can investigate it. If you can't perceive it reliably, scientism argues, how can you be confident that it's actually there. Is anything truly beyond science's possibilities? Currently, of course, there are potentially huge swathes of reality that science cannot adequately explain, but is there anything 'real' that is in principal beyond scientific enquiry?
I'm not sure there are - I think there is a large proportion of those that look to scientism who don't see that there is, in principle, anything in reality that is beyond the realm of science.
Why? The only things that I've heard people say are beyond science are the things that they, or at least a considerable number of others, say are issues beyond 'knowledge' and into the realms of faith.
Yes. Scientism is the problem. Science has its uses but cannot be used everywhere. And the word Science can be used as a subject of study or a branch of knowledge also. It does not always mean only a method of investigation. I used the microscope as an analogy to illustrate how something can be very useful in certain areas but utterly useless in other areas.
There are some experiences that, when examined, turn out not necessarily to be reliable.
It can, but it seems to me that acceptance of many of these phenomena is to ignore reliable evidence in favour of personal experience (if you're lucky) or the acceptance of subjective personal testimony if the experience doesn't happen directly to you. We have any number of demonstrations that human perception is fundamentally unreliable in any number of ways, why would we rely so strongly on it in an area where the objective evidence is so overwhelmingly suggesting that there's nothing reliable their to measure?
The point is that everything is human experience. If human experiences is that unreliable, should we use a light meter to detect light? No...our eyes are good enough. This can be carried to ridiculous levels. While I agree that our imagination and instinctive needs do create lot of clutter in the brain, there is something beyond the clutter that can be seen and experienced very reliably. That is what Yogic exercises are meant for. They are used to still the mind so that we can separate the clutter from the real experience. And this can be taught to everyone....so it is not just a one off personal experience.
Science doesn't say so, science - as you've pointed out - doesn't deal with 'why', science deals with how. Scientists, to some extent, philosophers - both those that adhere to scientism and others - ask 'why presume there is a reason' because there has been a history of circular reasoning to justify theism that presumes a why to presume a consciousness with wants to justify the why. We think in 'why' because we consider ourselves to be free-willed agencies, and we are the architects of our own perceived realities, but objective reality is objected precisely because it is not reliant on our perception of it - so without our need for a 'why', what is there in nature to suggest there is a 'why'?
Because we intuitively accept that Consciousness or the inner Self is responsible for our lives. We don't accept life as just an accidental or random occurrence. The fact that our Unconscious mind is responsible for many of our decisions and insights, suggests that lot more is going on within us than we can imagine.
So those who claim to have experienced it will say, but I (for one) have not experienced it, so to presume there is a why doesn't satisfy that emotional need for self-justification. I have, however, perceived of sentient tomatoes chasing me down a hallway - a fever-dream in a particularly nasty bout of gastro-enteritis - but I don't presume my experience necessarily justifies presuming reality. I might be inclined to conduct further examinations, but it is at best a possibility until there's an external validation of it.
I don't understand what you are saying.. Consciousness is what YOU are regardless of what its true nature may be. Your subjective self is the Consciousness that I am talking about. It is not something we need to see objectively nor can it be seen that way.
I don't see that leap. Life is a process of energy exchanges conforming to a (currently not particularly well-defined) pattern, and consciousness is a subset of those energy exchanges conforming to an even less well-defined pattern. When the pattern of energy exchanges alters (i.e. we die) then the pattern no longer conforms to life or consciousness and we stop. I don't see a need for anything more in the system than that - I'm not definitively ruling it out from that understanding, but I'm equally not presuming that it's a part of the system that I can't understand because it doesn't add anything to my explanation except a need for more evidence and answers.
I don't think they do. NDE's add to the experiences that require explanations, but there are perfectly good explanations that rely entirely on physical phenomena such as brain chemistry and neuron activity - they aren't proven, but they are conceptually sound. I guess there's a strong element of Occam's Razor in the argument.
There is no leap. It is the most common, intuitive way of looking at life and death. NDE's add strength to these philosophies. There is plenty of reason to believe that they are real post death experiences. Just go through individual cases...and read Sam Parnia.
Philosophy already has provided a very good reason. It's an unnecessary addition - we have a viable explanation without an independent 'spirit' component, so why add a complication with no reliable, independent evidence?
What reason? Life is complicated. We cannot have some Occam's razor limiting us and telling us how the world ought to be. The world is the way it is. If there is an independent spirit, no Occam's razor or philosophical fallacy can wish it away. Currently it is a valid philosophical position. If it is proven one way or the other a some date, we will see.
To be consistent, science presumes that EVERYTHING is a product of physical processes, it's part of the foundation of the conceptualisation of the scientific method. That is, potentially, a limitation, but that will only be a practical consideration at the point where someone comes up with as reliable a method for demonstrating non-physical elements of reality, and that hasn't happened yet.
Science has, though, posited a conceptually valid understanding of consciousness - it needs considerably more evidence to upgrade it from the current 'hypothesis' to a full-blown theory of consciousness, but it's there to be challenged.
Maybe science has its views...yes....but it is not conclusive. It is just a view based on a certain microscopic methodology. I am fine with that but it does not automatically dismiss the other position.
The idea is valid, yes, but many, many ideas are valid (despite, in many cases, being mutually incompatible). We can't accept all of them, even given the human capacity for cognitive dissonance, so how do we choose which to accept? For instance, you appear to adopt a variant of a Hindu dualistic understanding of consciousness - this, as you say, is entirely valid. There is no conceivable way, as I understand, not just to validate that understanding in any reliable way, but even to suggest that there is grounds for choosing it over, say, a Catholic conception of dualism, or an Islamic one. My question doesn't come from the point of 'your conception is patently nonsense' because it isn't, there is an internal logic to it. My question comes from 'why do you choose that conception which has no evidentiary support and no prospect of ever being validated rather than one which does?'
It does have personal and subjective evidence. One has to take up certain practices to see it for themselves. The mind will broaden and you will see 'Why' for yourself.
For those of us who live in cultures where the struggles between reason and faith (as opposed to arguments between faiths) have resulted in bloodshed, anything that's seen to validate or justify mysticism, spirituality or religion can be seen as a potential threat - if one unverifiable conceptualisation of dualism (your rather inoffensive Hindu concept of consciousness) can be accepted, how can another (the Islamic spiritual devotion to Allah) be contested?
Which raises the question - and this is perhaps a topic for another discussion - if the Islamic fundamentalists who perpetrated attacks such as the London Underground bombings feel like they're attacking 'Christendom' (for want of a better word) but those of us in an increasingly atheist Britain see this as a religious attack on a secular state, is it a battle between faiths or a battle between reason and faith?
That is why I am arguing for secular spirituality as against religious beliefs. Religions have regional and cultural elements that can be offensive. Science has its limitations due to its microscopic nature. The only viable option is secular spirituality.
I'd like to think I'm asking people to listen, so I do the same, otherwise we're all just shouting into the wind like a Daily Mail comment section, aren't we?
O.
:D True!
Cheers.
Sriram
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Sriram,
Yes. Scientism is the problem. Science has its uses but cannot be used everywhere. And the word Science can be used as a subject of study or a branch of knowledge also. It does not always mean only a method of investigation. I used the microscope as an analogy to illustrate how something can be very useful in certain areas but utterly useless in other areas.
No it isn’t “the” problem at all. Scientism is the idea that science is the only known way to identify reliably and consistently the truth or otherwise of epistemological claims of fact. This is true, or at least it appears to be so as there are no other means on the table to do the job. Your microscope analogy fails because it just assumes that stuff the "microscope" cannot see exists, only the tool isn’t capable of seeing it.
The best you could actually say is that there’s no way to know whether science will always be the only means to sift probable truths from probable non-truths, but few people that I know of take that position so it’s largely a red herring in any case.
The point is that everything is human experience. If human experiences is that unreliable, should we use a light meter to detect light? No...our eyes are good enough. This can be carried to ridiculous levels. While I agree that our imagination and instinctive needs do create lot of clutter in the brain, there is something beyond the clutter that can be seen and experienced very reliably. That is what Yogic exercises are meant for. They are used to still the mind so that we can separate the clutter from the real experience. And this can be taught to everyone....so it is not just a one off personal experience.
How would you know that explanations we arrive at for the phenomena we experience subjectively are reliable unless you have some method objectively to test the claim? You have no idea whether something “can be seen and experienced very reliably” by applying mental exercises because still all you’re left with is guessing and opinion.
Because we intuitively accept that Consciousness or the inner Self is responsible for our lives. We don't accept life as just an accidental or random occurrence.
Who doesn’t do that?
The fact that our Unconscious mind is responsible for many of our decisions and insights, suggests that lot more is going on within us than we can imagine.
Yes, most mental activity happens at the unconscious level. We have no difficulty imaging that though because it’s been studied and written about extensively. Try some David Eagelman to get you started for example.
I don't understand what you are saying.. Consciousness is what YOU are regardless of what its true nature may be. Your subjective self is the Consciousness that I am talking about. It is not something we need to see objectively nor can it be seen that way.
He’s saying that one person’s causal story (giant tomatoes) is as (in)valid as another’s (auras) when when both are non-investigable and non-verifiable claims.
There is no leap. It is the most common, intuitive way of looking at life and death. NDE's add strength to these philosophies. There is plenty of reason to believe that they are real post death experiences. Just go through individual cases...and read Sam Parnia.
There isn’t plenty of good or robust reason though, and the very problem is reliance on intuition as a reliable guide to truth. Evolution has no brief for our intuitions to provide epistemic truths – all intuition needs to tell us is that the rustling in the grass is a tiger so we’d better run away whether or not there actually is a tiger in the grass.
Intuition in other words is a highly unreliable method so identify what is and isn’t true.
What reason? Life is complicated. We cannot have some Occam's razor limiting us and telling us how the world ought to be. The world is the way it is. If there is an independent spirit, no Occam's razor or philosophical fallacy can wish it away. Currently it is a valid philosophical position. If it is proven one way or the other a some date, we will see.
It isn’t a valid philosophical position at all because it has no coherent reasoning to support it, and you misunderstand the point about Occam’s razor. We have already various incomplete explanations for certain phenomena we experience. Adding non-verifiable guesses to the mix contributes nothing to finding the most likely answers, and nor can it unless they too have some means of testing and verification.
Maybe science has its views...yes....but it is not conclusive.
One of your favourite straw men. No-one, least of all people who do science, claims its findings to be conclusive.
It is just a view based on a certain microscopic methodology. I am fine with that but it does not automatically dismiss the other position.
No it isn’t. It’s both a method and a set of findings that have been investigated and found reliably to produce results. It makes no claim to “automatically dismiss the other position” because “the other position” cannot be examined using the methods of science. Your problem though is that “the other position” cannot be examined using any other known method either, which is why it remains incoherent guessing.
That is why I am arguing for secular spirituality as against religious beliefs.
You’re not “arguing” for anything; you’re asserting, supported occasionally by some very bad arguments.
Religions have regional and cultural elements that can be offensive.
So?
Science has its limitations due to its microscopic nature.
Wrong again. The problem isn’t with the “microscopic nature” of science; it’s with the non-investigability of truth claims with which neither the methods of science nor any other methods can engage.
The only viable option is secular spirituality.
Don’t be silly. “Secular spirituality” as a means of identifying truths is incoherent gibberish, and will remain so unless and until you or someone else can finally tell us what it means and propose some means of distinguishing it from just guessing.
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Yes. Scientism is the problem. Science has its uses but cannot be used everywhere.
Well, scientism might be a problem. We don't know that science can't be applied to everything that's physically real, and we haven't (so far as I've seen) come up with anything that adequately validates claims of anything that's not physically real. We have conjecture, and perhaps we can't absolutely refute it, but we appear to set ourselves higher standards than accepting merely any logically valid conception.
And the word Science can be used as a subject of study or a branch of knowledge also.
There can be a tendency to confuse the process of scientific enquiry and the resulting provisional understandings that are a result of that scientific enquiry, that's true.
I used the microscope as an analogy to illustrate how something can be very useful in certain areas but utterly useless in other areas.
The key difference, though, is that with (say) a telescope instead of microscope there is both an explanatory mechanism and a wealth of evidentiary suppoort as to why the telescope is objectively a) reliable and b) a better choice than the microscope in certain circumstances. That's not the case for means of investigation or enquiry that are not science.
The point is that everything is human experience. If human experiences is that unreliable, should we use a light meter to detect light?
Yes. The point of the light meter is to remove as much of the subjectivity of the human experience as possible from the measurment process ("it's a bit brighter") and to replace it with a numerical understanding of the underlying physical phenomena ("it's 20 lumens brighter"). The light meter is not subjective, it's read-out is a calibrated numerical value, hence our understanding of the light level does not depend on our subjective sense and interpretation of light, but on our relatively robust interpretation of numerical values. It's not foolproof, but it's significantly more reliable.
No...our eyes are good enough.
That rather depends on what light level you're trying to measure, and for what purpose. Is it light enough to read, that's something we can adequately do without a light meter, but is this laser output in the range I need for this cutting task... I'd suggest that's not something to test by eye.
While I agree that our imagination and instinctive needs do create lot of clutter in the brain, there is something beyond the clutter that can be seen and experienced very reliably
Except that time and time again it's been ably demonstrated that we can't reliably experience phenomena, and the further from the core of the human experience the worse we are. Our memory for detail of visual experience is very poor, we are not particularly good at identifying absolute volume or tone of sound - our senses work best at distinguishing patterns in changing inputs rather than fixed detail. Our memory of sensory phenomena is rewritten every time we review our memory of the event,, such that eye-witness testimony should be considered highly questionable in most circumstances. We can experience things, and we can testify to the intensity of the experience reliably, but we should revert to the CCTV and the DNA evidence when it comes to the particulars.
That is what Yogic exercises are meant for. They are used to still the mind so that we can separate the clutter from the real experience. And this can be taught to everyone....so it is not just a one off personal experience.
And is there any reliable evidence that this is effective at improving our sensory performance or our mnemonic capabilities?
Because we intuitively accept that Consciousness or the inner Self is responsible for our lives.
Which we is this, Batman?
We don't accept life as just an accidental or random occurrence.
Beg to differ - I'd not characterise it as such, but in the way that I think you are conceiving it, that's exactly how I 'accept' it. Life is a complex manifestation of the ongoing, entirely deterministic sequence of cause and effect events that has been progressing for the entirety of the existence of the universe, which itself may be the deterministic outcome of some extra-universal events with their own physical laws and constants. I don't see a need for a 'free will' or independent consciousness in that mix.
The fact that our Unconscious mind is responsible for many of our decisions and insights, suggests that lot more is going on within us than we can imagine.
Well, not than we can imagine, but rather that there is more going on than the feedback loops in our mental structure are returning to the actively conscious part of the brain's activity that we perceive as consciousness.
I don't understand what you are saying.. Consciousness is what YOU are regardless of what its true nature may be
What 'True nature'? Consciousness is the part of my brain's activity that is experienced as me being aware of my existence - it's the 'I' in 'I think therefore I am'.
Your subjective self is the Consciousness that I am talking about. It is not something we need to see objectively nor can it be seen that way.
Why not? If we develop sufficient understanding of the neurology and the information pathways, why can't we potentially understand the conscious self?
There is no leap. It is the most common, intuitive way of looking at life and death.
And, therefore, given what we understand about the limitations of human experience, to be questioned strongly.
NDE's add strength to these philosophies.
Only if it is presumed that the subjective experience is somehow representative of an objective reality, despite the lack of any discernible pathway for the information to get into the brain to trigger understanding in such scenarios.
There is plenty of reason to believe that they are real post death experiences. Just go through individual cases...
Multiple anecdotes does not equal data; many, many people can be wrong. Examinations of brain activity during extreme stress gives explanations for these experiences which relies on physical realities that we can already adequately demonstrate do exist.
...and read Sam Parnia.
I shall add him to my ever-expanding list...
What reason? Life is complicated. We cannot have some Occam's razor limiting us and telling us how the world ought to be. The world is the way it is. If there is an independent spirit, no Occam's razor or philosophical fallacy can wish it away. Currently it is a valid philosophical position. If it is proven one way or the other a some date, we will see.
Occam's Razor doesn't determine whether it's true or not, it's a way of deciding, in the absence of reliable information, which is the more likely explanation to be valid. In this instance, we have two internally valid conjectures: one of them builds upon already validated understandings of reality, and one requires the assumption of an entirely unevidenced additional 'layer' of reality. One of these has to be considered more likely than the other, and it's the one that doesn't require an entire additional realm of mechanics to resolve.
Maybe science has its views...yes....but it is not conclusive. It is just a view based on a certain microscopic methodology. I am fine with that but it does not automatically dismiss the other position.
It's a method with an unparalleled record of success and achievement, and I don't see why it should be considered 'microscopic'. It's only limit is reality, intrinsically, and the only reason to consider it limited is to presume that there is something beyond reality.
It does have personal and subjective evidence. One has to take up certain practices to see it for themselves. The mind will broaden and you will see 'Why' for yourself.
That's not a reliable manner of enquiry given both human limitations and the history of people who have gone looking for this and found nothing, or who have gone looking for nothing and found something equally unverifiable that is other than your claim.
That is why I am arguing for secular spirituality as against religious beliefs. Religions have regional and cultural elements that can be offensive. Science has its limitations due to its microscopic nature. The only viable option is secular spirituality.
Except that you still don't have any reliable evidence for 'spirituality', just the same 'you can't disprove it' argument that each individual religion has. That you aren't picking one of their particular sides doesn't mean that you're rejecting their inadequate methodologies.
O.
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Hi Outrider,
I'll avoid a sentence by sentence reply. I usually avoid it because it is too cumbersome....and could go on forever. I think the essence can be captured without a microscopic discussion.
Your first point creates a conflict...... "We don't know that science can't be applied to everything that's physically real, and we haven't (so far as I've seen) come up with anything that adequately validates claims of anything that's not physically real".
If we insist that only science can be used to understand phenomena...and we continue to use only science as the means to validate the idea...it doesn't make sense. We have to step out to see if other means can be used. If you continue to use science you will obviously keep coming up only with physical phenomena.
That is the essence of what I am saying. If there is any reality outside the physical domain (I say there is), we cannot keep insisting that we should use physical means to understand it or else it is not valid. That is incorrect.
Btw...let me add that I don't think of the physical and the non physical as two separate worlds. I think it is a continuum...a spectrum where they overlap. For example, you cannot examine psychological aspects of people through methods used in physics. Every aspect of psychology cannot be examined through meters and instruments. The mind is not just the brain. Personal discussion and anecdote are more important means of examination and treatment.
Cheers.
Sriram
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If we insist that only science can be used to understand phenomena...and we continue to use only science as the means to validate the idea...it doesn't make sense. We have to step out to see if other means can be used. If you continue to use science you will obviously keep coming up only with physical phenomena.
That is the essence of what I am saying. If there is any reality outside the physical domain (I say there is), we cannot keep insisting that we should use physical means to understand it or else it is not valid. That is incorrect.
The criticism is that your claims about souls as alluded to above and suchlike are inherently self-contradictory. You cannot on the one hand claim that souls and biofields etc cannot be detected by 'physical' instrumentation but then immediately claim that biofields and souls etc interact with bodies implying there is, actually, a physical interaction going on.
It is a case of double-think
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I have said that it is a continuum. They overlap. Not necessary that they should all be measurable. All aspects of the mind and consciousness cannot be measured through instruments. You are carrying physics and reductionism too far.
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I have said that it is a continuum. They overlap. Not necessary that they should all be measurable. All aspects of the mind and consciousness cannot be measured through instruments. You are carrying physics and reductionism too far.
In which case, the degree in which they overlap should be measurable. I think you are clutching at straws, trying to find a form of words in wherein something can be measurable when it suits your philosophy and excusing our inability to measure it where it conflicts with your philosophy. You'd need to elucidate on this business of 'overlap', how it works.
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If we insist that only science can be used to understand phenomena...and we continue to use only science as the means to validate the idea...it doesn't make sense. We have to step out to see if other means can be used. If you continue to use science you will obviously keep coming up only with physical phenomena.
That is the essence of what I am saying. If there is any reality outside the physical domain (I say there is), we cannot keep insisting that we should use physical means to understand it or else it is not valid. That is incorrect.
Then you need to come up with an actual methodology that enables us to tell probably right ideas from just guessing based on how something feels to you (or some group of people).
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If we insist that only science can be used to understand phenomena...and we continue to use only science as the means to validate the idea...it doesn't make sense. We have to step out to see if other means can be used. If you continue to use science you will obviously keep coming up only with physical phenomena.
Then by 'other means' you need a method that isn't science as we generally understand the term but is suited to the 'spiritual' - but that doesn't seem to exist. Berating science for its acknowledged limitations doesn't get around the absence of a similarly disciplined and reliable 'spiritual' alternative.
That is the essence of what I am saying. If there is any reality outside the physical domain (I say there is), we cannot keep insisting that we should use physical means to understand it or else it is not valid. That is incorrect.
Straw man - nobody is saying that: you are simply being asked what method(s) exist specific to the 'spiritual'.
Btw...let me add that I don't think of the physical and the non physical as two separate worlds. I think it is a continuum...a spectrum where they overlap.
How could you ever know anything about this 'overlap' since, presumably, the 'spiritual' would need to in some way influence or intrude upon the physical for this overlap to be recognised - again, what method(s) applies here?
For example, you cannot examine psychological aspects of people through methods used in physics.
Don't be silly - there are many examples of detectable physical factors that can have psychological consequences: ingested substances, sleep deprivation, trauma and disease come to mind.
Every aspect of psychology cannot be examined through meters and instruments. The mind is not just the brain.
Yet it does seem that the mind is dependent on a functioning brain.
Personal discussion and anecdote are more important means of examination and treatment.
Such exchanges are undoubtedly of interest, but more is needed to draw reliable conclusions: after all, people can make mistakes, people can be misled (or mislead themselves), some people can mislead others (knowingly or unintentionally) and all of us can potentially be wrong. Discussion and anecdote are no substitute for investigation without there being a basis to exclude these risks.
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I shall follow your lead on the line-by-line...
I don't see the conflict in acknowledging those realities, they are merely framing the current status. We have no solid reason to think that anything is beyond the remit of science - science flows from what we can perceive directly or indirectly; if we can't perceive it, then we need a justification for accepting the proposition and at the moment the only reliable mechanism we have for doing that is scientific enquiry. It's not impossible that there are other methods out there, but as yet they've not been put forward.
There's no intrinsic insistence that justifications have to be scientific in nature, but there is a justifiable request that anything we're going to use to contradict the scientific understanding has some sort of justification that at least approaches the level of consistent performance that scientific enquiry has produced. It's easy - I fall prey to it myself - to forget that scientific understandings are technically only provisional, that something could come along that completely undermines entire swathes of our understanding (Newtonian gravitation being the obvious example, but there are innumerable others).
I understand that you feel - perhaps with some justification - that a non-physical reality would not be susceptible to scientific enquiry. However, not only is there not a complementary method for investigating such concepts with as much validity, but the idea that something could interact with a physical human being in such a way that the interaction itself is somehow beyond science does not make any sense - anything that happens to the body is measurable, is investigable with science. Anything that doesn't interact with the human body, so far as we have any evidence for, would be functionally no different to something that didn't exist.
I can't really get my head around the concept of a continuum of reality from physical through to non-physical. I can just about grasp the idea that some things (say, people) would have manifestations in both whilst other things (say, tables) would only exist in one (and, presumably, there could be some entirely non-physical things as well). What I can't see is any reason to think that this is the case, given that we gather information through our senses which interact with the physical world; I'm not sure there's any evidence of the senses or the brain responding to non-physical stimuli.
O.
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I can't really get my head around the concept of a continuum of reality from physical through to non-physical. I can just about grasp the idea that some things (say, people) would have manifestations in both whilst other things (say, tables) would only exist in one (and, presumably, there could be some entirely non-physical things as well). What I can't see is any reason to think that this is the case, given that we gather information through our senses which interact with the physical world; I'm not sure there's any evidence of the senses or the brain responding to non-physical stimuli.
O.
Many of the 'spiritual' practices are about detaching from the inclination to 'get the head around' or 'grasp ideas about' as these are just mental activities or efforts to give form to the formless, time to the timeless, limitations to the limitless etc. I suspect that many of the words used in 'spiritual' literature are just terms used to give a clue to the direction of 'spiritual' paths. Words like spirit, soul and aura are associated with air which was possibly in the distant past people's understanding of space, which is present within the body and outside of it and extending to the heavens. It is omnipresent and is a symbol of unity whereas the forms and forces which make up the physical universe tend towards separation and disunity and which the conceptualising mind latches on to. A quote from the Tao Te Ching gives a clue:
Many spokes are needed to create a wheel
But it is the space at the centre that makes it functional.
Create a pot from clay,
But it is the space within that makes it useable.
A house may have many windows and doors,
But it is the open space that allows them to be used.
Therefore, although we favour what is in Existence
We need to see the spacious value of inner Being.
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Many of the 'spiritual' practices are about detaching from the inclination to 'get the head around' or 'grasp ideas about' as these are just mental activities or efforts to give form to the formless, time to the timeless, limitations to the limitless etc.
You'll appreciate that could equally be interpreted as 'don't think about it, just accept what you're told', right? It might not be in the intent, I'm certainly not working on the basis that it's the spirit with which it's intended, but functionally it's the same thing.
I suspect that many of the words used in 'spiritual' literature are just terms used to give a clue to the direction of 'spiritual' paths. Words like spirit, soul and aura are associated with air which was possibly in the distant past people's understanding of space, which is present within the body and outside of it and extending to the heavens.
And yet, in the few hundred years since we developed the capacity to create partial vacuums (and, therefore, barometers) we've determined that space is there and investigated and uncovered huge amounts of information about it, developed a coherent, well-defined dictionary of relevant terms and used those foundations to hypothesise further possibilities which we can hope to test in the future. By contrast, despite the concept having been apparently in the human collective consciousness for thousands of years, it seems we're still no closer to establishing anything reliable at all about 'spirit'.
It is omnipresent and is a symbol of unity whereas the forms and forces which make up the physical universe tend towards separation and disunity and which the conceptualising mind latches on to.
Deep. So vague as to be interpretable in any way you'd like to do so, and so functionally meaningless... perhaps it fits more neatly into the original context, or perhaps the transliteration loses cultural references, I don't know, but that just doesn't amount to anything coherent.
Many spokes are needed to create a wheel
But it is the space at the centre that makes it functional.
Create a pot from clay,
But it is the space within that makes it useable.
A house may have many windows and doors,
But it is the open space that allows them to be used.
Therefore, although we favour what is in Existence
We need to see the spacious value of inner Being.
So many things wrong with that - it's not the space at the centre of a wheel that makes it function, it's the whole wheel - if you don't have a rim or a tyre, you don't have a wheel. When you create a pot the space inside is part of the pot - if you follow the contours of a pot, but have a solid core, you don't have a pot you have a blank for making a mold. Similarly, if you build something with the exterior form of a house, but a solid interior you haven't built a house - the space is not something separate from the house, it's intrinsically a part of the concept. All these spaces are measurable, demonstrable practical realities - if they were absent, the object wouldn't be what it claims, it wouldn't work. Given that we cannot show any impact of 'spirit' on the real world, in what way is a real world without 'spirit' demonstrably different from a real world with it?
O.
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(1) You'll appreciate that could equally be interpreted as 'don't think about it, just accept what you're told', right?
(2) And yet, in the few hundred years since we developed the capacity to create partial vacuums (and, therefore, barometers) we've determined that space is there and investigated and uncovered huge amounts of information about it, developed a coherent, well-defined dictionary of relevant terms and used those foundations to hypothesise further possibilities which we can hope to test in the future. By contrast, despite the concept having been apparently in the human collective consciousness for thousands of years, it seems we're still no closer to establishing anything reliable at all about 'spirit'.
(3) So many things wrong with that - it's not the space at the centre of a wheel that makes it function, it's the whole wheel - if you don't have a rim or a tyre, you don't have a wheel. When you create a pot the space inside is part of the pot - if you follow the contours of a pot, but have a solid core, you don't have a pot you have a blank for making a mold. Similarly, if you build something with the exterior form of a house, but a solid interior you haven't built a house - the space is not something separate from the house, it's intrinsically a part of the concept. All these spaces are measurable, demonstrable practical realities - if they were absent, the object wouldn't be what it claims, it wouldn't work. Given that we cannot show any impact of 'spirit' on the real world, in what way is a real world without 'spirit' demonstrably different from a real world with it?
O.
(1) Yes, it could but it often means 'don't blindly believe what you are told but detach from thinking and conceptualising and experience for yourself following a suggested method'.
(2) The inner path is not about gathering information and converting it into dictionary terms and hypotheses. It is more about transformation and transcendence of the individual and his egocentricity. The sort of egocentricity which drives the information gatherer to direct it to ever growing means of destruction of life and pollution of the earth, air and water of the planet. I suspect that it was always a forlorn hope and probably beyond hope now. As regards establishing anything reliable about 'spirit', I suspect that it will never meet the conditions which you would impose upon reliability because the description is likely to be subjective in nature like enduring ecstasy, bliss, joy, enlivening, 'peace that passes understanding', love, oneness. These are all words which signify nothing in themselves and are probably useless to the information gatherer.
(3) ... and so many things wrong with that - the word used was functional i.e. if the space between the axle and its bearing is filled with rust it will cease to be functional, space is important. The second word used was 'useable' i.e. if the pot was filled with solid clay it would cease to be useable as a pot for liquids, space is important. Similarly if windows and doors do not have the space between them and the frames they will not be useable, space is important. Lao Tse was suggesting that one should give as much attention to our inner space (spirit) as we do the physical and mental framework which surrounds it. I suspect that materialism was just as important in his day as it is today and looking at the state of China today, obviously his words did not bear much fruit.
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I shall follow your lead on the line-by-line...
I don't see the conflict in acknowledging those realities, they are merely framing the current status. We have no solid reason to think that anything is beyond the remit of science - science flows from what we can perceive directly or indirectly; if we can't perceive it, then we need a justification for accepting the proposition and at the moment the only reliable mechanism we have for doing that is scientific enquiry. It's not impossible that there are other methods out there, but as yet they've not been put forward.
There's no intrinsic insistence that justifications have to be scientific in nature, but there is a justifiable request that anything we're going to use to contradict the scientific understanding has some sort of justification that at least approaches the level of consistent performance that scientific enquiry has produced. It's easy - I fall prey to it myself - to forget that scientific understandings are technically only provisional, that something could come along that completely undermines entire swathes of our understanding (Newtonian gravitation being the obvious example, but there are innumerable others).
I understand that you feel - perhaps with some justification - that a non-physical reality would not be susceptible to scientific enquiry. However, not only is there not a complementary method for investigating such concepts with as much validity, but the idea that something could interact with a physical human being in such a way that the interaction itself is somehow beyond science does not make any sense - anything that happens to the body is measurable, is investigable with science. Anything that doesn't interact with the human body, so far as we have any evidence for, would be functionally no different to something that didn't exist.
I can't really get my head around the concept of a continuum of reality from physical through to non-physical. I can just about grasp the idea that some things (say, people) would have manifestations in both whilst other things (say, tables) would only exist in one (and, presumably, there could be some entirely non-physical things as well). What I can't see is any reason to think that this is the case, given that we gather information through our senses which interact with the physical world; I'm not sure there's any evidence of the senses or the brain responding to non-physical stimuli.
O.
Outrider,
Yes...the idea of a reality spectrum moving from the 'hard core' physical to the less physical to the non physical is a fact. While the laws of physics are underlying all aspects of the universe, as some kind of a base, we cannot directly use them everywhere like say...biology. There are complex aspects of life that develop at each stage where reductionism is not possible.
Physics...Chemistry...biology...psychology. The level of precision and predictability become less and less. There are so many so called 'emergent properties' at each level that each of these areas are almost separate worlds in themselves.
Psychology is where we can see biology overlapping with the mind. What we call 'Spirituality' only takes it a step further where we see the mind overlapping with consciousness.
Scientific methods have been largely developed in the area of physics. We can see that they cannot be applied with equal efficiency in biology and much less so in psychology. We cannot always plug in instruments to understand the mind. That is why the mind, consciousness and spiritual aspects are not amenable to scrutiny in the same way that physical aspects are.
So, scientific enquiry has too narrow a scope for it to be seen as a universally applicable system. Either we broaden the scope of science itself or have a new system which restricts the use of current 'science' methodologies up till biology and from there adopt a new system of enquiry with different methodologies and techniques. This obviously cannot be offered by any single person on a platter. This needs a new way of thinking and the consorted efforts of several philosophers. It has to evolve by and by.
Cheers.
Sriram
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So, scientific enquiry has too narrow a scope for it to be seen as a universally applicable system. Either we broaden the scope of science itself or have a new system which restricts the use of current 'science' methodologies up till biology and from there adopt a new system of enquiry with different methodologies and techniques. This obviously cannot be offered by any single person on a platter. This needs a new way of thinking and the consorted efforts of several philosophers. It has to evolve by and by.
This is simply blaming the methods for failing to validate your beliefs rather than accepting the simpler more obvious conclusion, that the beliefs are wrong.
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This is simply blaming the methods for failing to validate your beliefs rather than accepting the simpler more obvious conclusion, that the beliefs are wrong.
No. I am merely saying that we should not get so fixated with a method or methodology that we refuse to see its limitations.
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(1) Yes, it could but it often means 'don't blindly believe what you are told but detach from thinking and conceptualising and experience for yourself following a suggested method'.
Experience can have subjective value, I don't deny that, but to eschew 'thinking' in favour of accepting our limited sensory capabilities and even more limited intrinsic conceptualisations is to limit our capacity to understand, not to expand it.
(2) The inner path is not about gathering information and converting it into dictionary terms and hypotheses. It is more about transformation and transcendence of the individual and his egocentricity. The sort of egocentricity which drives the information gatherer to direct it to ever growing means of destruction of life and pollution of the earth, air and water of the planet. I suspect that it was always a forlorn hope and probably beyond hope now. As regards establishing anything reliable about 'spirit', I suspect that it will never meet the conditions which you would impose upon reliability because the description is likely to be subjective in nature like enduring ecstasy, bliss, joy, enlivening, 'peace that passes understanding', love, oneness. These are all words which signify nothing in themselves and are probably useless to the information gatherer.
Transformation into what? It is not the process of information gathering that is driving a means of destruction - indeed, it is invariably the sort of 'emotional' expressor who decries the scientific community and there masses of evidence on the scale of the destruction in favour of chasing, say, self-actualisation through accumulation of wealth.
If the only concept of 'spirit' that's possible is a subjective one that encompasses ecstasy, bliss and the like, then I don't need spirituality, those are elements of the entirely physical life I already have. Those are states of mind which, so far as we can tell, correlate with particular patterns of brain activity in particular areas of the brain.
(3) ... and so many things wrong with that - the word used was functional i.e. if the space between the axle and its bearing is filled with rust it will cease to be functional, space is important. The second word used was 'useable' i.e. if the pot was filled with solid clay it would cease to be useable as a pot for liquids, space is important. Similarly if windows and doors do not have the space between them and the frames they will not be useable, space is important. Lao Tse was suggesting that one should give as much attention to our inner space (spirit) as we do the physical and mental framework which surrounds it. I suspect that materialism was just as important in his day as it is today and looking at the state of China today, obviously his words did not bear much fruit.
If the 'space' is filled with metal, or plastic, or wood, though, the wheel works fine, a filled pot isn't useless as a pot, it's simply not a pot, likewise a house with no inside is not a house, it's a sculpture of a house. This isn't 'deep', this isn't 'wisdom', it's truthiness.
O.
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Yes...the idea of a reality spectrum moving from the 'hard core' physical to the less physical to the non physical is a fact. While the laws of physics are underlying all aspects of the universe, as some kind of a base, we cannot directly use them everywhere like say...biology. There are complex aspects of life that develop at each stage where reductionism is not possible.
Biology is the application of physics on a large, aggregated scale. That we can't directly apply them is a limitation of computational power, not a limitation of the concepts of physics - there is no 'hard core' physical, there is merely the physical. Biology is a collection of short-hand explanations for regular patterns of physical activity because it's a more convenient level at which to operate to investigate particular phenomena.
Physics...Chemistry...biology...psychology. The level of precision and predictability become less and less. There are so many so called 'emergent properties' at each level that each of these areas are almost separate worlds in themselves.
Right? That doesn't change the fact that the physics at the core of it is highly predictable - arguably, if we knew enough, absolutely predictable.
Psychology is where we can see biology overlapping with the mind.
Neuroscience is where we see biology and the mind overlapping, psychology is where we try to draw inference from neuroscience into culture.
What we call 'Spirituality' only takes it a step further where we see the mind overlapping with consciousness.
But the overlap is 100% - consciousness and mind are the same thing.
Scientific methods have been largely developed in the area of physics. We can see that they cannot be applied with equal efficiency in biology and much less so in psychology. We cannot always plug in instruments to understand the mind. That is why the mind, consciousness and spiritual aspects are not amenable to scrutiny in the same way that physical aspects are.
I don't think that's intrinsically the case, I think that's the current situation. That we don't currently have the precision or the depth of knowledge to take neuroscientific measurements and accurately interpret them into psychological findings doesn't mean that's impossible, it just means we need to keep learning.
So, scientific enquiry has too narrow a scope for it to be seen as a universally applicable system. Either we broaden the scope of science itself or have a new system which restricts the use of current 'science' methodologies up till biology and from there adopt a new system of enquiry with different methodologies and techniques. This obviously cannot be offered by any single person on a platter. This needs a new way of thinking and the consorted efforts of several philosophers. It has to evolve by and by.
You seem to be operating on the idea that science has stopped, that we aren't still learning new things. Science continues, and neuroscience, artificial intelligence and the like are at the forefront of it. To say 'we can't do this, therefore it's impossible' would validate the claim that people aren't really flying planes, driving cars, fighting bacterial infections or watching porn on the internet, and there's way, way too much evidence for all of those to discount it.
O.
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Lao Tse was suggesting that one should give as much attention to our inner space (spirit) as we do the physical and mental framework which surrounds it.
I was intrigued by your translation of this chapter. I've read many translations and commentaries over the years but never one that explicitly refers to the space here as representing inner being or spirit:
'Therefore, although we favour what is in Existence
We need to see the spacious value of inner Being.'
This seems to suggest that inner being is somehow opposed to 'existence' which would be very odd and not very Daoist, I think. Usually, the sense is rendered something more like this:
'Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.' (Gia-Fu Feng)
which is more in keeping with Daoism's emphasis on the usefulness of absence (as in doing by not-doing wu-wei) or what is normally considered useless (as in the 'useless tree' of Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters).
Anyway, it's an interesting take, whether it's what was originally meant or not.
It's probably also worth reflecting that whilst it is indeed the space within that makes a pot useful, that space is only useful because it is contained by the pot!
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Biology is the application of physics on a large, aggregated scale. That we can't directly apply them is a limitation of computational power, not a limitation of the concepts of physics - there is no 'hard core' physical, there is merely the physical. Biology is a collection of short-hand explanations for regular patterns of physical activity because it's a more convenient level at which to operate to investigate particular phenomena.
Right? That doesn't change the fact that the physics at the core of it is highly predictable - arguably, if we knew enough, absolutely predictable.
Neuroscience is where we see biology and the mind overlapping, psychology is where we try to draw inference from neuroscience into culture.
But the overlap is 100% - consciousness and mind are the same thing.
I don't think that's intrinsically the case, I think that's the current situation. That we don't currently have the precision or the depth of knowledge to take neuroscientific measurements and accurately interpret them into psychological findings doesn't mean that's impossible, it just means we need to keep learning.
You seem to be operating on the idea that science has stopped, that we aren't still learning new things. Science continues, and neuroscience, artificial intelligence and the like are at the forefront of it. To say 'we can't do this, therefore it's impossible' would validate the claim that people aren't really flying planes, driving cars, fighting bacterial infections or watching porn on the internet, and there's way, way too much evidence for all of those to discount it.
O.
The point I am making is that there are domains at various levels that behave almost as separate worlds.....though they are obviously connected and overlap. We can broadly classify them as Physics, chemistry, biology, psychology...and so on. We can go further into the subatomic world and talk of elementary particles as a separate quantum domain...then maybe Strings. Beyond psychology, we can talk of mind as one domain, Consciousness as another.
All these, though interconnected, cannot be reduced into the earlier domains or understood in those terms. There are properties at each level that cannot be explained through pure reductionism.
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The point I am making is that there are domains at various levels that behave almost as separate worlds.....though they are obviously connected and overlap. We can broadly classify them as Physics, chemistry, biology, psychology...and so on. We can go further into the subatomic world and talk of elementary particles as a separate quantum domain...then maybe Strings. Beyond psychology, we can talk of mind as one domain, Consciousness as another.
All these, though interconnected, cannot be reduced into the earlier domains or understood in those terms. There are properties at each level that cannot be explained through pure reductionism.
Ok, I see that - there are more than a few people who criticise the inclusion of psychology (and other social sciences) in any list of sciences, suggesting that nothing within it can be measured, all you can hope to do is make statistical judgements on outcomes - whether that constitutes science or not, I suppose, is a judgement call of its own.
However, 'beyond' psychology, what is there to interpret or measure or assess or analyse? There's a claim of something 'spiritual' but nothing demonstrable as even an effect of it to be accepted, let alone assessed in any way.
O.
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It's probably also worth reflecting that whilst it is indeed the space within that makes a pot useful, that space is only useful because it is contained by the pot!
But of course the space itself is not needed if it contains 'no-tea' (as Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki would say)
Okay, let me 'clarify':
My Tea is No-Tea, which is not no-Tea in opposition to Tea. What then is this No-tea? When a man enters the exquisite realm of No-tea, he will realise that No-tea is no other than the Great Way itself
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
I kid you not.
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But of course the space itself is not needed if it contains 'no-tea' (as Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki would say)
Okay, let me 'clarify':
Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki
I kid you not.
That may be the definition of deepitea.
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(1) Experience can have subjective value, I don't deny that, but to eschew 'thinking' in favour of accepting our limited sensory capabilities and even more limited intrinsic conceptualisations is to limit our capacity to understand, not to expand it.
(2) Transformation into what? It is not the process of information gathering that is driving a means of destruction - indeed, it is invariably the sort of 'emotional' expressor who decries the scientific community and there masses of evidence on the scale of the destruction in favour of chasing, say, self-actualisation through accumulation of wealth.
If the only concept of 'spirit' that's possible is a subjective one that encompasses ecstasy, bliss and the like, then I don't need spirituality, those are elements of the entirely physical life I already have. Those are states of mind which, so far as we can tell, correlate with particular patterns of brain activity in particular areas of the brain.
(3) If the 'space' is filled with metal, or plastic, or wood, though, the wheel works fine, a filled pot isn't useless as a pot, it's simply not a pot, likewise a house with no inside is not a house, it's a sculpture of a house. This isn't 'deep', this isn't 'wisdom', it's truthiness.
O.
(1) There is nothing in what I said which suggests that. You agree that experience can have a subjective value but this does not mean that one has to eschew thinking. It's not an either/or situation, it's a both/and situation i.e. the inner value of joy can be experienced even when thinking is in process.
(2) "Transformation into what?" I think you have answered your own question. It's a transformation from or transcendence of what I have phrased as individual egocentricity and you have phrased 'self actualisation' i.e. egocentric and self centred are much the same. It's not so much that 'spirit' is defined by those qualities you mention but is more, said to be, a place marker for their inner source. If your materialistic life provides all that your brain patterns need, then long may it continue. I doubt whether anybody would waste time persuading otherwise.
(3) Well, I won't spend anymore time on trying to explain Lao Tse's verse. It was probably written some 500 years BCE and was not meant to be 'deep' or 'wisdom' as I believe he saw simplicity as a virtue and it was only intended as an analogy to help those of his time who lacked a materialistic lifestyle, and whose heads weren't filled with the wonders of Wikipedia.
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I was intrigued by your translation of this chapter. I've read many translations and commentaries over the years but never one that explicitly refers to the space here as representing inner being or spirit:
This seems to suggest that inner being is somehow opposed to 'existence' which would be very odd and not very Daoist, I think. Usually, the sense is rendered something more like this:
which is more in keeping with Daoism's emphasis on the usefulness of absence (as in doing by not-doing wu-wei) or what is normally considered useless (as in the 'useless tree' of Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters).
Anyway, it's an interesting take, whether it's what was originally meant or not.
It's probably also worth reflecting that whilst it is indeed the space within that makes a pot useful, that space is only useful because it is contained by the pot!
Shhh! You've caught me out. It was about 40 years ago when I looked at the Tao Te Ching and the only one that seemed available was the Richard Wilhelm translation. I decided to create my own version according to my own understanding, rightly or wrongly. I was not a Daoist but more on a mission to discover what was behind a variety of religions and to try to discover a common thread. I would probably be classed as a heretic by all of them. So don't tell anyone!
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Shhh! You've caught me out. It was about 40 years ago when I looked at the Tao Te Ching and the only one that seemed available was the Richard Wilhelm translation. I decided to create my own version according to my own understanding, rightly or wrongly. I was not a Daoist but more on a mission to discover what was behind a variety of religions and to try to discover a common thread. I would probably be classed as a heretic by all of them. So don't tell anyone!
That must have been quite a project and I'm sure you learnt a lot from it. Thomas Merton did something similar with the Zhuangzi (parts of it anyway) by using 5 separate translations (he couldn't read Chinese himself). I've sometimes wondered about writing a children's story based on some of the passages in the Inner Chapters - they have so many layers of meaning and are often very amusing - but I'm probably too lazy so it'll likely remain a fantasy.
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That must have been quite a project and I'm sure you learnt a lot from it. Thomas Merton did something similar with the Zhuangzi (parts of it anyway) by using 5 separate translations (he couldn't read Chinese himself). I've sometimes wondered about writing a children's story based on some of the passages in the Inner Chapters - they have so many layers of meaning and are often very amusing - but I'm probably too lazy so it'll likely remain a fantasy.
Have a go. You'll probably find out a lot about yourself as well.
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Ok, I see that - there are more than a few people who criticise the inclusion of psychology (and other social sciences) in any list of sciences, suggesting that nothing within it can be measured, all you can hope to do is make statistical judgements on outcomes - whether that constitutes science or not, I suppose, is a judgement call of its own.
However, 'beyond' psychology, what is there to interpret or measure or assess or analyse? There's a claim of something 'spiritual' but nothing demonstrable as even an effect of it to be accepted, let alone assessed in any way.
O.
Outrider,
See my point?! If even psychology cannot be called science what to say of Consciousness and after-life etc?! But that does not mean that the mind does not exist or that psychology does not have its patterns. Just that they could be beyond current investigative methodologies.
All the more reason to expand the scope of science and define it more broadly.
What is beyond psychology is the Self. The real You! Ceasing to identify with the body...then the mind... emotions...and intellect ...and to recognize the real you beyond all this. That is what spirituality is all about.
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All the more reason to expand the scope of science and define it more broadly.
What is beyond psychology is the Self. The real You! Ceasing to identify with the body...then the mind... emotions...and intellect ...and to recognize the real you beyond all this. That is what spirituality is all about.
The above exemplifies good reason to not expand the scope of science; at least to me it looks like 'expanding the scope of science' equates to 'abandoning mental discipline and evidence based reasoning' in favour of unhinged speculation.
If there is a 'self' that is somehow 'beyond' the body and emotions and intellect how could it be defined ? What would be its properties, it qualities ?
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The above exemplifies good reason to not expand the scope of science; at least to me it looks like 'expanding the scope of science' equates to 'abandoning mental discipline and evidence based reasoning' in favour of unhinged speculation.
If there is a 'self' that is somehow 'beyond' the body and emotions and intellect how could it be defined ? What would be its properties, it qualities ?
If science cannot investigate psychology, that is a limitation of science not of our minds...for heavens sake...!!
You don't need to define the Self. That is what YOU are.
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See my point?! If even psychology cannot be called science what to say of Consciousness and after-life etc?!
I worked with several psychologists during my career and I think they'd be surprised that their work was being compared to superstitious beliefs such as 'after-life'.
But that does not mean that the mind does not exist or that psychology does not have its patterns. Just that they could be beyond current investigative methodologies.
Yet these particular psychologists were specialists in behavioural therapies, sometimes referred to as CBT, and were informed by and contributed to the specialist knowledge involved - it was also the case that these psychologists were seen as making a relevant contribution by the other professionals involved (psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, police etc) so I suspect you may be undervaluing the 'science' aspect of what psychologists do.
All the more reason to expand the scope of science and define it more broadly.
Not really - the scope of science may well expand but in a structured ways that build on reliable methods and knowledge and, of course, peer-review to ensure that established science doesn't drift into pseudoscience by incorporating aspects that are outwith the scope of science or are too ill-defined to be amenable to scientific study.
What is beyond psychology is the Self. The real You! Ceasing to identify with the body...then the mind... emotions...and intellect ...and to recognize the real you beyond all this. That is what spirituality is all about.
So you say - but 'it ain't science as we know it, Jim'.
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If science cannot investigate psychology, that is a limitation of science not of our minds...for heavens sake...!!
You don't need to define the Self. That is what YOU are.
That skips rather lightly over the fact that the nature of identity has been debated in philosophy for many years.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity/ (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity/)
What 'I' am is not an easy question to answer in any depth. Clearly there are simplistic answers but they tend not to capture the nature of constant change within an individual and if you contend that there is a 'real me' that is 'beyond' emotions, mind etc somehow, then what is it ? As far as I can see, if I subtract the body and all the thoughts and habits and predispositions and personal memories etc, then there will be nothing left by which to define me, nothing left that other people could recognise me by.
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See my point?! If even psychology cannot be called science what to say of Consciousness and after-life etc?! But that does not mean that the mind does not exist or that psychology does not have its patterns. Just that they could be beyond current investigative methodologies.
All the more reason to expand the scope of science and define it more broadly.
What is beyond psychology is the Self. The real You! Ceasing to identify with the body...then the mind... emotions...and intellect ...and to recognize the real you beyond all this. That is what spirituality is all about.
Sorry, perhaps I should have been a little clearer, I didn't say that I personally feel that psychology isn't a science. I do think that it's at the far reaches of what the scientific method can work with, and that any findings - even given the inherent provisional nature of scientific findings - needs to be seen as provisional.
The problem with psychology is that it's at the edge of what the scientific method can work with, currently, given the lack of depth of understanding we currently have of the component parts of what it's looking at. We couldn't conduct advanced research on applications of lasers without Maxwell's basics of electromagnetism, and similarly we are hampered in our scientific understanding of the mind by our current lack of in depth knowledge of the mechanics of neurology. The answer isn't to dispense with scientific enquiry or to water down scientific rigour, it's to be patient and realise that we're constantly learning about neurology, and those understandings will flow through.
We need to maintain the standards that have brought us this far, not abandon them because we'd feel more comfortable with an unjustifiable confidence than with a justified 'We're not quite sure just yet'.
O.
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About 74% of PhDs in psychology are female
(American psych association )
Is that significant in some way ?
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ekim,
(1) There is nothing in what I said which suggests that. You agree that experience can have a subjective value but this does not mean that one has to eschew thinking. It's not an either/or situation, it's a both/and situation i.e. the inner value of joy can be experienced even when thinking is in process.
The point here is that "personal experience" provides only beliefs, opinions. "My practices led to an immense sensation of oneness" is fine, but tagging "therefore Ra" to it isn't.
To the extent that individuals find sensations or altered mental states have value to them, well and good. Sriram's mistake though is to overreach - he jumps straight form beliefs ("aura", "biofield" etc) to a claim of knowledge ("therefore these things are objectively real"). And that fails because, absent some means to verify the belief, there's no logical path from one to the other. That is, Sriram cannot meaningfully claim knowledge when he has no means to know whether he actually has knowledge rather than just belief.
To the extent that he tries to justify the leap from one to the other ("lots of other things that once weren't known about were discovered later on, therefore...errr..." etc) the effort always collapses immediately into vary bad reasoning.
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Hi blue
Although reading your well thought out responses on this thread is an interesting experience to me I'm intregued as to why you continue with it ?
It's a bit like trying to teach a one handed person to play a guitar . At some point one must realise the task is fruitless . There comes a time to walk away .
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Hi Walter,
Hi blue
Although reading your well thought out responses on this thread is an interesting experience to me I'm intregued as to why you continue with it ?
It's a bit like trying to teach a one handed person to play a guitar . At some point one must realise the task is fruitless . There comes a time to walk away .
You're probably right, but cock-eyed optimist that I am I still cling to the notion that one day he might wake up, have an unexpected rush of honesty, finally try at least to address the arguments that undo him and, when that fails, concede that all he has is unqualified beliefs (and some very poor thinking).
Probably not a good idea to bet more than 10p on that ever happening though I guess ;)
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ekim,
The point here is that "personal experience" provides only beliefs, opinions. "My practices led to an immense sensation of oneness" is fine, but tagging "therefore Ra" to it isn't.
I'll leave you to take issue with what Sriram says, but to comment on what you say above, I agree that it is unwise to tag any 'therefores' to personal inner experiences. Even if two people had the same inner experience I am not sure how one could validate that as being identical, even more so if somebody declares union with Brahman. Some yogis make such declarations others like Buddha 'maintain a noble silence'.
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I'll leave you to take issue with what Sriram says, but to comment on what you say above, I agree that it is unwise to tag any 'therefores' to personal inner experiences. Even if two people had the same inner experience I am not sure how one could validate that as being identical, even more so if somebody declares union with Brahman. Some yogis make such declarations others like Buddha 'maintain a noble silence'.
Yes, there is something quite odd about claiming inner experiences as the same. Even on a mundane level we get back by not looking too closely at the idea that anything we say about an experience may only sound similar to another person but could be entirely different.
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ekim,
I'll leave you to take issue with what Sriram says, but to comment on what you say above, I agree that it is unwise to tag any 'therefores' to personal inner experiences. Even if two people had the same inner experience I am not sure how one could validate that as being identical, even more so if somebody declares union with Brahman. Some yogis make such declarations others like Buddha 'maintain a noble silence'.
Well yes - "I experienced sensation X" is about as much as it's possible to say without some means to justify any casual explanation for "X" you might want to reach for. If someone claims a cause nonetheless, that's a belief but a belief is all it is.
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Hi Walter,
You're probably right, but cock-eyed optimist that I am I still cling to the notion that one day he might wake up, have an unexpected rush of honesty, finally try at least to address the arguments that undo him and, when that fails, concede that all he has is unqualified beliefs (and some very poor thinking).
Probably not a good idea to bet more than 10p on that ever happening though I guess ;)
blue,
What puzzles me is he appears to be a relatively intelligent bloke !
Maybe he's a proficient troll and lives in Safron Walden
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I'm not sure if my view of this chimes with anything Sriram thinks as we seem to be completely different in how we might express things BUT while I don't think there is any useful thing in terms of 'spirituality', a term so wide and open to be worthless, I do struggle with the issue that for me nothing of real interest in how I should live comes from science. The main issues of my life are not why gravity, but what should I do. I wonder if there would be a more open approach on what Sriram is trying to say which is not about objectivity but a celebration of our subjectivity.
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NS,
I'm not sure if my view of this chimes with anything Sriram thinks as we seem to be completely different in how we might express things BUT while I don't think there is any useful thing in terms of 'spirituality', a term so wide and open to be worthless, I do struggle with the issue that for me nothing of real interest in how I should live comes from science. The main issues of my life are not why gravity, but what should I do. I wonder if there would be a more open approach on what Sriram is trying to say which is not about objectivity but a celebration of our subjectivity.
Well yes - "science" tells me very little about how to live a good life, except perhaps that accepting justifiable beliefs tends to lead to happier outcomes than living according to unjustifiable ones. Sriram though gets shot down because he goes way beyond that to make claims of objective fact about the world - that "auras" exist, that certain practices are clinically effective etc. This is science's turf - such claims should in principle at least be investigable (by double blind trials on supposed clinical efficacy for example) but he insists on eliding belief into knowledge about such claims with no justification at all.
In other words, he isn't celebrating subjectivity at all - rather he's trying to magic subjectivity into objectivity.
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NS,
Well yes - "science" tells me very little about how to live a good life, except perhaps that accepting justifiable beliefs tends to lead to happier outcomes than living according to unjustifiable ones. Sriram though gets shot down because he goes way beyond that to make claims of objective fact about the world - that "auras" exist, that certain practices are clinically effective etc. This is science's turf - such claims should in principle at least be investigable (by double blind trials on supposed clinical efficacy for example) but he insists on eliding belief into knowledge about such claims with no justification at all.
In other words, he isn't celebrating subjectivity at all - rather he's trying to magic subjectivity into objectivity.
I'm not suggesting Sriram is celebrating subjectivity. I'm just wondering if it might be a better general approach. As with reverse Meat Loaf, and reverse argument by analogy that have cropped up in the last couple of days, there's a reverse need sometimes to make everything objective by people of many different views. It seems to me ultimately a bit of a sterile debate - it's the attitude that gibes rise to ID and 'creation science'. I'm mush more interested in the discussion between ekim and Bramble on the thread which seems both less tangible and more open.
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I'm not sure if my view of this chimes with anything Sriram thinks as we seem to be completely different in how we might express things BUT while I don't think there is any useful thing in terms of 'spirituality', a term so wide and open to be worthless, I do struggle with the issue that for me nothing of real interest in how I should live comes from science. The main issues of my life are not why gravity, but what should I do. I wonder if there would be a more open approach on what Sriram is trying to say which is not about objectivity but a celebration of our subjectivity.
oddly enough I can agree in part with some of the sentement of your post .
Yesterday I had occasion to visit a "Complementary medicine " clinic (the only place I could find in an emergency) to fix a painful toe nail
The whole place was alien to me but she sure fixed my toe 👍
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oddly enough I can agree in part with some of the sentement of your post .
Yesterday I had occasion to visit a "Complementary medicine " clinic (the only place I could find in an emergency) to fix a painful toe nail
The whole place was alien to me but she sure fixed my toe 👍
I don't see it as that surprising that you might agree in part. Though it's nothing about Complementary Medicine. I just don't think that the ineresting questions, or answers have anything to do with science
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Srirams philosophy should have;
For entertainment perpouses only after it .
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I'm sorry , I'd like to continue with this but it's proving too difficult on this old iPhone 4 with signal dropping in and out 😤
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I'm sorry , I'd like to continue with this but it's proving too difficult on this old iPhone 4 with signal dropping in and out 😤
It's a good time to go to the pub anyway.
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It's a good time to go to the pub anyway.
🍻cheers old chap
L8rs x
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Sorry, perhaps I should have been a little clearer, I didn't say that I personally feel that psychology isn't a science. I do think that it's at the far reaches of what the scientific method can work with, and that any findings - even given the inherent provisional nature of scientific findings - needs to be seen as provisional.
The problem with psychology is that it's at the edge of what the scientific method can work with, currently, given the lack of depth of understanding we currently have of the component parts of what it's looking at. We couldn't conduct advanced research on applications of lasers without Maxwell's basics of electromagnetism, and similarly we are hampered in our scientific understanding of the mind by our current lack of in depth knowledge of the mechanics of neurology. The answer isn't to dispense with scientific enquiry or to water down scientific rigour, it's to be patient and realise that we're constantly learning about neurology, and those understandings will flow through.
We need to maintain the standards that have brought us this far, not abandon them because we'd feel more comfortable with an unjustifiable confidence than with a justified 'We're not quite sure just yet'.
O.
Outrider,
Yes...exactly. Psychology is at the edge of the scientific method....so, how do you expect science (with its present limitations) to be useful in understanding deeper aspects of psychology....which is what spirituality overlaps with?!
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Sriram,
.......which is what spirituality overlaps with?!
Not unless you can finally tell us in coherent form what you mean by "spirituality" it doesn't.
Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behaviour. "Spirituality" on the other hand is, well, over to you then...
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Yes...exactly. Psychology is at the edge of the scientific method....so, how do you expect science (with its present limitations) to be useful in understanding deeper aspects of psychology....which is what spirituality overlaps with?!
The same way any science is useful, by building up a body of well-evidenced theory and using that foundation as a staging post to further understanding of observed phenomena. Spirituality might overlap with just about anything, but given that we don't have any reliable evidence that it is an actual phenomenon at all we'll have to continue assessing those things that we can detect until something objective to support it shows up.
O.
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Yeah...ok. Thanks, Outrider!