Tree in a forest

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

I know that most of you will relegate all this to the 'same old...same old' category and go back to your comfort zones.  But for those who are somewhat more sensitive and insightful...it can be a very personally fulfilling revelation.  It can be very spiritually uplifting.

Cheers.

Sriram

[Gordon]

Sriram

This tree in a forest thought experiment really is banal though.

It is similar to when you encounter a sniffer-dog at an airport and realise that there are aspects of the natural that we are subjectively unaware of that dogs can sense, but you can also see that whenever you take one for a walk and it sniffs everything and anything (including the backsides of other dogs) - it is routinely unremarkable and not in the least 'spiritually uplifting', unless you are easily spiritually uplifted by relative trivia.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

I know that most of you will relegate all this to the 'same old...same old' category and go back to your comfort zones.  But for those who are somewhat more sensitive and insightful...it can be a very personally fulfilling revelation.  It can be very spiritually uplifting.

Lots of people feel just as "uplifted" by their beliefs in things you'd think to be preposterous, especially if every argument they made to justify them were as hopeless as those you attempt to justify your beliefs.

Being "sensitive and insightful" does not mean abandoning reason to accept whatever unqualified assertions people happen to make.

[Enki]

My goodness...!   You guys are going on and on about words and definitions.     Your philosophical limitations are showing...!!  You have had too much of microscopic science, guys. Take a breather.

Don't you realize that if all that we perceive as the objective world is just a subjective experience....then all that you people keep on and on about as Laws of Nature, Emergent Property, Random Variations, Determinism etc.etc. are just perceived realities  and not necessarily absolute in themselves??!!

I agree that what we believe about the world  works well enough in our day to day life, but that again is only like the laws and realities within a VR game. Not real in itself...!  Its all in the mind!

As they say...Consciousness is fundamental.

That would be something, wouldn't it, Sriram? If only 'You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.'as Scrooge said to Marley's ghost in 'A Christmas Carol', then I would have to take you that much more seriously than I actually do, and not treat you as an actual character on an actual forum.   I would think that my mind would have to be seriously compromised to create a character like you. Mind you, the same would apply to you, of course, if I was simply the product of a series of subjective thoughts in your own mind. 

[jeremyp]

Don't you realize that if all that we perceive as the objective world is just a subjective experience....then all that you people keep on and on about as Laws of Nature, Emergent Property, Random Variations, Determinism etc.etc. are just perceived realities  and not necessarily absolute in themselves??!!

Big if there.

[Nearly Sane]

Big if there.

That sort of depends on what is meant by it. By definition all out experiences are subjective. If the 'if' is suggesting that there is nothing real to be experienced, then I agree. Not really clear what Sriram means.

[Udayana]

That would be something, wouldn't it, Sriram? If only 'You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.'as Scrooge said to Marley's ghost in 'A Christmas Carol', then I would have to take you that much more seriously than I actually do, and not treat you as an actual character on an actual forum.   I would think that my mind would have to be seriously compromised to create a character like you. Mind you, the same would apply to you, of course, if I was simply the product of a series of subjective thoughts in your own mind. 

Careful Enki, you're perilously close to giving the game away!

[Enki]

Careful Enki, you're perilously close to giving the game away!

It's too late. I'm slowly disappearing. Help.......

[Sriram]

Hi everyone,

This is another of the areas where Science highlights facts about normal human experiences that point to extra human phenomena (what we usually call spirituality). 

I know most of you here aren't quite clued in about what I mean and why the fact of subjectivity is so important. But then, that's the way you people have always been. No surprises there! 

As I have pointed out many times, spirituality isn't about any God or any religious mythology. It is about realizing the illusionary nature of the objective world and realizing that ultimately its all really a personal subjective experience.   

Everyone knows that hearing, vision etc. are impulses in the brain....but to go from there to an actual realization of the subjective nature of reality...is a big step.     It is almost an awakening. Not easy, and maybe I was expecting too much from you people here (as always).

Some of you here seem to be admiring and even agreeing with Donald Hoffman...but you don't really get what he is concluding do you?!

Well...never mind.

Cheers.

Sriram

[Walter]

Hi everyone,

This is another of the areas where Science highlights facts about normal human experiences that point to extra human phenomena (what we usually call spirituality). 

I know most of you here aren't quite clued in about what I mean and why the fact of subjectivity is so important. But then, that's the way you people have always been. No surprises there! 

As I have pointed out many times, spirituality isn't about any God or any religious mythology. It is about realizing the illusionary nature of the objective world and realizing that ultimately its all really a personal subjective experience.   

Everyone knows that hearing, vision etc. are impulses in the brain....but to go from there to an actual realization of the subjective nature of reality...is a big step.     It is almost an awakening. Not easy, and maybe I was expecting too much from you people here (as always).

Some of you here seem to be admiring and even agreeing with Donald Hoffman...but you don't really get what he is concluding do you?!

Well...never mind.

Cheers.

Sriram

Hi sriram
Reminds me of the stuff we left behind in the 6th form common room back in the 1970s

Well... Never mind

[Outrider]

This is another of the areas where Science highlights facts about normal human experiences that point to extra human phenomena (what we usually call spirituality). 

I know most of you here aren't quite clued in about what I mean and why the fact of subjectivity is so important. But then, that's the way you people have always been. No surprises there! 

If you look at history, it's replete with people giving competing claims about what they 'know' about spirituality.

As I have pointed out many times, spirituality isn't about any God or any religious mythology. It is about realizing the illusionary nature of the objective world and realizing that ultimately its all really a personal subjective experience.

And what I've pointed out directly in response, multiple times, is that just because our experience of reality is necessarily subjective doesn't mean that reality itself isn't objective.  The goal is to realise the extent of the subjectivity, and to design methods of enquiry that eliminate or reduce it.   

Everyone knows that hearing, vision etc. are impulses in the brain....but to go from there to an actual realization of the subjective nature of reality...is a big step.

It is.  That's why we've developed things like science, to formalise the investigation, to validate the subjective experience with either mechanical measurement or, at the least, independent assessment.

It is almost an awakening. Not easy, and maybe I was expecting too much from you people here (as always).

It's not 'an awakening', it's an overreach.  You've gone from 'our experience is subjective' which no-one is disagreeing with, to 'therefore reality is also subjective' which is just nonsense.

O.

[Bramble]

As I have pointed out many times, spirituality isn't about any God or any religious mythology. It is about realizing the illusionary nature of the objective world and realizing that ultimately its all really a personal subjective experience.

Shouldn't that be "realizing the illusionary nature of the subjective world?"

Here's a definition of the word illusion: a misrepresentation of a “real” sensory stimulus—that is, an interpretation that contradicts objective “reality” as defined by general agreement.

Since we can't directly apprehend the so-called objective world (because it can only be known subjectively through some kind of representation) I'm not sure how we can say that this objective world is illusory. It is not in itself an interpretation or representation. It's just whatever it is.

We can't do anything about whatever the objective world is but we can appreciate that the way we experience it is personal and interpretive. That the sound of a tree falling isn't itself 'out there' may from one perspective seem trivial, as some here have said. However, I accept that the thought experiment that is the subject of this thread needn't end with triviality. It depends on where you are prepared to take it. One might, for instance, use this thought experiment as a portal into what Buddhists call emptiness (shunyata) but I'm guessing that isn't what appeals to you since that would lead to an appreciation of the self as contingent. It would also undermine the idea that there is something fundamental underlying what we call reality and I think you want to say that consciousness is fundamental and that this is what our 'true' self actually is.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

This is another of the areas where Science highlights facts about normal human experiences that point to extra human phenomena (what we usually call spirituality).

I know most of you here aren't quite clued in about what I mean and why the fact of subjectivity is so important. But then, that's the way you people have always been. No surprises there! 

As I have pointed out many times, spirituality isn't about any God or any religious mythology. It is about realizing the illusionary nature of the objective world and realizing that ultimately its all really a personal subjective experience.   

Everyone knows that hearing, vision etc. are impulses in the brain....but to go from there to an actual realization of the subjective nature of reality...is a big step.     It is almost an awakening. Not easy, and maybe I was expecting too much from you people here (as always).

Some of you here seem to be admiring and even agreeing with Donald Hoffman...but you don't really get what he is concluding do you?!

Well...never mind.

Does it really not occur to you that when all you have to "contribute" is arrogant irrationality of this kind that maybe – just maybe – everything you clam here to be be true isn't true at all?

Seriously though?

[Sriram]

Bramble,

Ok...what I am pointing out is, not that there is nothing real. We just cannot know what objective reality actually is.

Why this is important is because scientists have for decades been insisting that what they have probed and discovered is the Truth and that our subjective experiences are of no consequence to external reality.  This is false. In fact, everything that we consider as the objective Truth is nothing but a subjective experience. It turns the idea of objective reality on its head. 

And this is not just by way of saying that 'we are looking through the senses and brain'...like looking through a robotic device of some sort. No...it is not like that at all. Our senses and brain create the objective world that we experience. It is like a VR world. Is the real world just energy, Strings, elementary particles,...?

Another way of looking at it is.... without the means to interact with it, the world would be similar to Dark Matter. Not there...for all practical purposes. Or alternatively, if we could see and feel dark matter, how would the world be?!

That is what I mean by an illusion. Not that there is no objective world but that what we are currently experiencing is created by our senses and brain.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

Why this is important is because scientists have for decades been insisting that what they have probed and discovered is the Truth...

Name one scientist who's ever said that. Why do you keep lying about this?

[Bramble]

Sriram

I understand what you are saying. What I'm interested in is where you want to take it. You've read here people dismissing the fact that we can't experience the objective world as it is in itself as trivial and unimportant. Clearly you don't think that it is and you've said a little about how you find this insight spiritually uplifting. I know enough about Indian thought to appreciate that the idea of illusion - maya - is extremely important. There is a long tradition of understanding 'reality' as existing one way but appearing another. I've said a bit about how this has influenced Buddhist thought. Some spiritual traditions speak of how we can awaken from the 'dream', others argue that we can only do so to it. Perhaps you could expand on how this is central to your idea of spirituality. It might help people to appreciate why this isn't trivial for you and even why it might not be trivial for them. Now there's optimism for you!

[Sriram]

Sriram

I understand what you are saying. What I'm interested in is where you want to take it. You've read here people dismissing the fact that we can't experience the objective world as it is in itself as trivial and unimportant. Clearly you don't think that it is and you've said a little about how you find this insight spiritually uplifting. I know enough about Indian thought to appreciate that the idea of illusion - maya - is extremely important. There is a long tradition of understanding 'reality' as existing one way but appearing another. I've said a bit about how this has influenced Buddhist thought. Some spiritual traditions speak of how we can awaken from the 'dream', others argue that we can only do so to it. Perhaps you could expand on how this is central to your idea of spirituality. It might help people to appreciate why this isn't trivial for you and even why it might not be trivial for them. Now there's optimism for you!

Where can I 'take it'?  That would again be an attempt at imagining objective reality...which we know is not possible.  The only way as I have said, is to see it as a VR world. Now, what the 'real' world would be like outside the VR world, how can a person within the VR world say?  Maybe people who have had NDE's have some idea of the real world. That is all I can say.

But the fact the the Self or Subject or experiencer is the only reality that will exist beyond the 'VR world', is true, as far as we can know.

Never mind the guys here...!   

I am not a fan of Buddhism though many westerners seem to have found it useful as a gateway to Indian philosophy. It seems to be fashionable, though currently on a low. Everyone shoots over Buddha's shoulder and everything from Samkhya to Vedanta to Yoga to tantra to theism to nihilism is touted as Buddhism.  Many scholars feel that the only real words of Buddha himself is perhaps the compact Dhammapada.

[Bramble]

Sriram

I'm not asking you to imagine objective reality, merely to explain why you think it important spiritually to appreciate that we live in a VR world, as you put it.

Some folk might say that if we live in such a world then so what? It's just the world we live in. We have to live in some world, after all. Could there be a way of taking the world that is not a representation? Presumably even God would have to know the world in his own interpretive way, were he to exist. So if there isn't a 'higher' view to seek what would be the spiritual importance of appreciating the illusory nature of appearance? This is what I'm asking you. I think I was perfectly clear about this in my previous post, so I'm guessing you don't really want to answer the question. It would be interesting to know why.

I'm also puzzled by your comment that the only reality beyond the VR world is the experiencer. Earlier you wrote Not that there is no objective world implying that you do accept the existence such an objective world beyond the VR experience. This implies that you think the objective world and the experiencer are one and the same. Really? Sometimes it can be very difficult to fathom what it is you are trying to say! If the VR world is the world of experience, the subjective world, then how could the experiencer lie beyond it? How could something beyond experience be doing the experiencing? And if the subject self does lie beyond experience how are we to know ourselves? Isn't self-knowledge part of the goal in your spirituality?

If you don't want to engage with these questions I shan't keep coming after you for answers, but at least I have tried to engage constructively with you. It often seems to me that you want people to take an interest in your views but then won't give good reasons why they should do so. I'm trying to take an interest but I'm having trouble understanding why this topic has spiritual importance for you, beyond being 'uplifting' in some unexplained way. You've been offered an invitation; the rest's up to you.




 

[Sriram]

I don't know what explanation you want.   I have already said that it is like a VR world.  If you play a VR game, what is the only 'reality' there...YOU. If you want to know reality beyond the Vr game...you have to know yourself. Only from you can the real world be accessed.

If you try to take many microscopic views from within the Vr world and try to put them together to understand reality...what will you get? Nothing. You cannot understand reality from within the VR world. You have to go beyond  the game...which is understanding the real you beyond the one in the game....the watcher or experiencer himself.  This is the essence of spirituality...knowing yourself. 

Nothing more for me to clarify.

[Nearly Sane]

I don't know what explanation you want.   I have already said that it is like a VR world.  If you play a VR game, what is the only 'reality' there...YOU. If you want to know reality beyond the Vr game...you have to know yourself. Only from you can the real world be accessed.

If you try to take many microscopic views from within the Vr world and try to put them together to understand reality...what will you get? Nothing. You cannot understand reality from within the VR world. You have to go beyond  the game...which is understanding the real you beyond the one in the game....the watcher or experiencer himself.  This is the essence of spirituality...knowing yourself. 

Nothing more for me to clarify.

Begs the question by saying there is a 'you' to be known.

[Outrider]

I don't know what explanation you want.   I have already said that it is like a VR world.  If you play a VR game, what is the only 'reality' there...YOU. If you want to know reality beyond the Vr game...you have to know yourself. Only from you can the real world be accessed.

With current technology, a VR game can control visual input (which is probably our main sensory input, in most instances) and can control a significant amount of what we can hear, whilst influencing smell, temperature etc., but it can't control touch, balance, neuropropioception and a myriad other senses by which we can get a subjective understanding that there is something outside of what the VR system is feeding us.  If you are suggesting that we can't tell if we're in a sophisticated VR set-up, then we may not be able to disprove it, but there's no basis for accepting the claim either - it's an untestable hypothesis with no supporting evidence.

If you try to take many microscopic views from within the Vr world and try to put them together to understand reality...what will you get?

That's not what we're doing.  We're taking microscopic views of the VR world to try to put together an understanding of the VR world because there's no reason to presume that there's anything else out there.

Nothing. You cannot understand reality from within the VR world. You have to go beyond  the game...

Why presume there is something outside of it? What basis do you have for thinking that the things that we can consistently demonstrate are artificial creations of something for which we have no evidence?

which is understanding the real you beyond the one in the game....

Except that, if all we've known is the VR world, the 'us' of that world IS the real one.  That's the fallacy of your 'subjectivity' deepity - our experiences make us who we are, regardless of how subjective they are.  If the subjectivity suddenly gets stripped away and objective reality is somehow revealed to us, we remain who we are, just adrift in a foreign reality.

the watcher or experiencer himself.  This is the essence of spirituality...knowing yourself.

You don't need to pretend to step out of your own experience into something allegedly broader in order to that.  In fact, quite the opposite, even if there is something more than the physical reality that we can perceive, in the absence of any information about it or any impact on our lives from it, who we are is BY DEFINITION entirely independent of it - we are the creation of ours subjective experiences in the 'limited' scope of actual reality.

O.

Nothing more for me to clarify.
[/quote]

[Bramble]

Sriram

You've simply ignored most of my earlier post so I won't waste time pursuing this. You clearly don't want to engage. You also seem confused as to whether the subject/experiencer is inside or outside the VR game as you've claimed both at different times. This is just pointless.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Hi Bramble,

I'm not asking you to imagine objective reality, merely to explain why you think it important spiritually to appreciate that we live in a VR world, as you put it.

He can’t (or won’t) because he’s not a thinker in any meaningful sense. What he's implying without actually saying it is that “reality” is all guessing anyway, so…

…any guess is as valid as any other – therefore believing there to be “auras”, “biofields” etc is as epistemologically valid as believing there to be rainbows and oxbow lakes. It’s neither very bright nor very honest – not very bright because it fails to grasp that the experience of intersubjective reality creates a meaningful means of proceeding (which is why we use the stairs rather than jump out of the window) and not honest because it relies on repeated misrepresentations of what science in particular actually entails and a foundation of fallacious reasoning.

As others have noted, it’s all a bit sixth form but laced with condescension because he just assumes he’s right but other lack the jones’s to see it too. In short: there’s nothing to see here, just move along etc

[Sriram]

Sriram

You've simply ignored most of my earlier post so I won't waste time pursuing this. You clearly don't want to engage. You also seem confused as to whether the subject/experiencer is inside or outside the VR game as you've claimed both at different times. This is just pointless.

What do you mean...where is the experiencer?  Where is the experiencer in any VR game?

[Sriram]

With current technology, a VR game can control visual input (which is probably our main sensory input, in most instances) and can control a significant amount of what we can hear, whilst influencing smell, temperature etc., but it can't control touch, balance, neuropropioception and a myriad other senses by which we can get a subjective understanding that there is something outside of what the VR system is feeding us.  If you are suggesting that we can't tell if we're in a sophisticated VR set-up, then we may not be able to disprove it, but there's no basis for accepting the claim either - it's an untestable hypothesis with no supporting evidence.

That's not what we're doing.  We're taking microscopic views of the VR world to try to put together an understanding of the VR world because there's no reason to presume that there's anything else out there.

Why presume there is something outside of it? What basis do you have for thinking that the things that we can consistently demonstrate are artificial creations of something for which we have no evidence?

Except that, if all we've known is the VR world, the 'us' of that world IS the real one.  That's the fallacy of your 'subjectivity' deepity - our experiences make us who we are, regardless of how subjective they are.  If the subjectivity suddenly gets stripped away and objective reality is somehow revealed to us, we remain who we are, just adrift in a foreign reality.

You don't need to pretend to step out of your own experience into something allegedly broader in order to that.  In fact, quite the opposite, even if there is something more than the physical reality that we can perceive, in the absence of any information about it or any impact on our lives from it, who we are is BY DEFINITION entirely independent of it - we are the creation of ours subjective experiences in the 'limited' scope of actual reality.

O.

Nothing more for me to clarify.

If we take life to be like a VR game because of all the subjectivity involved...it automatically makes sense to presume a world outside the Vr  world. You ask why....I ask why not?!

In a VR game we do step out of our own VR experiences. We have one identity in the game and another outside it.  We continue being the experiencer but our world and identity changes.