AB,
But if it really is "the deeper reality at play beneath the experiential", my supposed repetition of mistakes and dishonest behaviour will be "just the way it seems" because I will have no possible control over this deeper reality. So what possible mechanism would you suggest for me to be able to rectify these mistakes if I can't control what you deem to be the ultimate underlying cause?
Recently you talked about reaching a crossroad, albeit completely wrongly. Well, I think you’ve reached one of your own now: if you continue with this you will have no choice but to reveal either that you cannot process even a simple logical explanation, or that you do understand it but you pretend not to so as to keep repeating exactly the same mistake. Neither is a good look, but unless you have a sudden bout of honesty they’re the only options.
Yet again: at the level of abstraction that is conscious awareness you are (or would be if you were honest) perfectly capable of evaluating arguments, deriving meaning, changing your mind etc. Within that paradigm (but only within that paradigm), these things aren’t “illusory” at all. They’re real enough to be functionally useful, indeed necessary if we’re to exist both individually and collectively.
BUT (and it’s a huge but), that does not imply that at a deeper level of reality you have or need to have any control, any consciousness, any
anything. Indeed there’s isn’t a “you” at that level at all because the “you” you perceive is an emergent property of all those gazillions of interacting bits and forces.
That’s the real illusory bit – the illusion that consciousness goes all the way down, has some sort of universal application, is anything other than a localised phenomenon that extends down into its constituent parts.
Now write that down in very big letters, and the next time you’re tempted to begin a reply with “but that would mean” you can read it, change your mind and not fall off the same cliff you’ve always fallen over before.
You’re welcome.
Magic is an illusion, unlike my conscious choice to compose this reply.
See above. Stage magic is deliberately illusory. There are lots of myths and folk tales though that rely on “real” magic – the Tooth Fairy, Father Christmas etc. Your concept of “soul” is one of those, epistemically identical in its absence of a cogent rationale.
As I have said before, I do not know the details of how the soul interacts with our physical brains.
No you don’t. Nor moreover do you know what a “soul” consists of, where it is, how anyone would investigate the claim, what any of its properties would be, or indeed
anything at all of any kind about this supposed phantom. And yet you have the sheer, unmitigated gall to dismiss all of the materialist evidence we do have for consciousness because of the gaps in it when you have nothing at all by way of an explanation for “soul” in which there even could
be gaps.
Does this colossal double standard trouble you not even slightly?
I just know that it enables our conscious freedom to choose –
Priceless! Then I “just know” that leprechauns leave pots of gold at the ends of rainbows. Can you think of any reason for someone to take more seriously your assertion of just knowing something than they should take my assertion of just knowing something?
…something which has been deemed impossible by the materialist views on this thread,
It’s got nothing to do with “materialist views” – it’s just logic. If you want to assert that logic no longer applies in Magicland that’s up to you, but if logic no longer applies there then nor can anything else. You can populate it with any madness or idiocy you like, which is pretty much what you do.
…and which frees us from being biological robots with no consciously driven willpower of our own.
And one of your favouring big fat lies/logical fallacies to finish. Bravo!
