Philosophy is Bullshit

[anticap]

Or, Axioms as the Basis for All Understanding (http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Beowulf/axioms/axioms/index.html), by Robert G. Brown

Discuss...

[A.R.Amistad]

Trash or move to chit chat please

[anticap]

Trash or move to chit chat please

Why? It's a perfectly valid perspective on philosophy, and it's interesting. Saying "discuss" doesn't make it "chit chat."

[ZeroNowhere]

Trash or move to chit chat please
Why would this be trashed or moved to chit chat?

[Dean]

You shouldn't just post links and assert a viewpoint. Please say something.

[anticap]

You shouldn't just post links and assert a viewpoint. Please say something.

Ohh... kay...

Robert G. Brown's Axioms as the Basis for All Understanding, a.k.a. "Philosophy is Bullshit," is an interesting perspective on philosophy that I feel is worth discussing. Does anyone else agree? Why, or why not?

P.S. Let me know if you'd like me to paste the full text below, or write an academic summary of it. While I'm at it, I could trawl this sub-forum for similar OPs so that you could bump them with similar admonitions against attempting to spark conversation in an unsatisfactory manner.

[Meridian]

Can't say I read all of that, but I agree with the general message.

Brown seems to rely on Hume, though I think Wittgenstein is the one who really showed what philosophy is (language misuse). Drove the stake through the heart or what not.

[black magick hustla]

Nietsche , Marx, and Kierkargaard had more or less destroyed most metaphysics. Wittgenstein came and cleaned up the mess into some tight thesis though.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

I'm amazed that such terrible writers can get books published. Well, that's kind of unrelated. He turns out to be a fiction writer as well.

Anyway, it's ironic that a physicist is making the criticism he does. Physics relies on philosophical methodologies all the time. A lot of concepts in physics aren't verifiable at this point in time. Quantum physics deals a lot with hypothetical facts, axioms, etc.

As usual, a science conceptualizes truth as if a person digs it up like a mineral. "Euraka, I've found truth!" Completely ignoring the role individual and social concepts shape what we consider truth. Of course philosophy selects the axioms before it begins. Science does the same thing.

You can criticize philosophy, fine, but scientists have some deluded notion that the field is somehow logically coherent. It selects axioms as self-evident just like anything else. Don't get me wrong, I like the axioms it selects, but they aren't substantiated by a proper meta-scientific theory.

Judge science and philosophy based on results and results potential. Assuming you believe scientific knowledge has led to more good than bad, science wins. Philosophy has still be useful in certain contexts throughout history.

[lulks]

it seems what the writer is criticizing is the idea that you can start from some self evident axioms and build all knowledge from that. that is indeed bullshit. i didn't read all of it though

[The New Consciousness]

Philosophy is a fancy name for daydreaming. The man who calls himself a philosopher is admitting his own blindness, his own ignorance, or self-indulgence. The truth is already self-evident before the quest begins. At least that's the nondual perspective on the matter.

[Thirsty Crow]

OK, just define what "truth" really is and explain how exactly is this "truth" self-evident.
Btw., one of the first prerequisites for philosophy as a cognitive activity is the admittance of ignorance. This is the basis of all knowledge acquisition, but I somehow doubt that you were referring to this fact.

[Endomorphian]

Philosophy is the art of being humbled by one's own ignorance. If only more people would 'think.'

I speak as a positivist. Even science relies on axioms and different approaches.

[The New Consciousness]

OK, just define what "truth" really is and explain how exactly is this "truth" self-evident.
Btw., one of the first prerequisites for philosophy as a cognitive activity is the admittance of ignorance. This is the basis of all knowledge acquisition, but I somehow doubt that you were referring to this fact.

The 'truth' is that this moment is all there ever is. Anything else is assumption.

[black magick hustla]

people who try to define "truth" miss the whole point of language. you might as well define someone flicking the middle finger, or showing his tongue.

[The New Consciousness]

Quite. Afterall, how could a fragment like thought possibly comprehend the whole?

[JazzRemington]

Quite. Afterall, how could a fragment like thought possibly comprehend the whole?

Fragments, even if "thought" is one of them, don't comprehend anything. People comprehend.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

If everyone would please reduce their argument into premise form and show how the premises entail the conclusion. I would appreciate it because all I see is unsubstantiated gibberish.

Also, truth is a word. The commonality between statements we see as "true" is what we are trying to explain. I would propose this arbitrary criteria:

It has use value as defined by utilities, and this is verifiable using a methodology that has consistently produced utility-maximizing results.

There are facts about the world within the context of a material non-human context, but these aren't necessarily truths. If believing something makes the world worse off, with respect to sentient beings across all times, the belief is false. It should still be examined within a specific context, but it should not guide political, social, and moral behavior within societies.

There are multiple perspectives by which a person can look at the same situation. In my view, a community of intellectuals should not put an abstract theoretical notion above feeling creatures that inhabit the worth. Theoretical systems have no interests, and people who hold logical entailment to a higher value than human experience are, in my view, slaves to their own creation.

I have the utmost respect for scientific method, but I honestly believe that if scientists came to the conclusion, through decent methodologies, that they should kill their own families, a significant portion of them would do it. Humans should operate first as emotional creatures and secondly as rational agents.

Placing "truth" at a highest standard becomes problematic when human considerations are largely ignored by the concept itself.

[The New Consciousness]

Fragments, even if "thought" is one of them, don't comprehend anything. People comprehend.

The thinker is thought.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga:


Anyway, it's ironic that a physicist is making the criticism he does. Physics relies on philosophical methodologies all the time. A lot of concepts in physics aren't verifiable at this point in time. Quantum physics deals a lot with hypothetical facts, axioms, etc

The difference is, as I have pointed out to you before, that the truth of philosophical theses follows from the alleged meaning of the words they contain. This is not so in Physics, or the rest of science, where theories and hypotheses are counted as true/false only after the evidence confirming/refuting them has turned up.

And this means that all of traditional philosophy is just self-important linguistic idealism -- where fundamental truths about 'reality' follow from thought/language alone.

[JazzRemington]

Fragments, even if "thought" is one of them, don't comprehend anything. People comprehend.

The thinker is thought.

This is too vague to be of any use. You seem to want to use these words in abstract from how they are used in ordinary language. If you were to look, you'll discover that this statement is nonsense.

Normally, "thinker" (as a concrete noun) is used in a wide variety of ways, even beyond those mentioned below:


"I wonder who you would consider the greatest systems thinker today?" - now it is a referring to a person who is of great influence or is very learned in a field.

"Jim was a very creative thinker." - now "thinker" refers to someone who thinks a particular way about something (compare "close thinker", "quick thinker", "incoherent thinker", etc.).

"Peter wasn't much of a thinker." - "thinker" now means something like a person who is smart or good at reasoning, or a person who thinks a lot.

It can even be used as a proper noun, as in "The Thinker."

You seem to want to define the word in abstract from any particular use in ordinary language, suggesting either a new definition or the possibility of "thinker" being all of these and more at once.

The same basically can be said for "is" (and its related terms, "to be", "are", etc.):


To occupy a specified position: The food is on the table.

To remain in a certain state or situation undisturbed, untouched, or unmolested: Let the children be.

To equal in identity: "To be a Christian was to be a Roman" (James Bryce).

To have a specified significance: A is excellent, C is passing. Let n be the unknown quantity.

To belong to a specified class or group: The human being is a primate.

To have or show a specified quality or characteristic: She is witty. All humans are mortal.

To seem to consist or be made of: The yard is all snow. He is all bluff and no bite.

To take place; occur: The test was yesterday.

To go or come: Have you ever been to Italy? Have you been home recently?

To have a specified significance: A is excellent, C is passing. Let n be the unknown quantity.

To belong; befall: Peace be unto you. Woe is me.

"Is" cannot mean all of these or none of these.

As for "thought", that depends upon what you mean by the word. How would you use it outside of philosophy?

[The New Consciousness]

now it is a referring to a person
refers to someone
something like a person

Ah, the deluded belief in the individual. You are totally shackled to duality.

You seem to want to define the word in abstract from any particular use in ordinary language, suggesting either a new definition or the possibility of "thinker" being all of these and more at once.

I am trying to get you to think outside the box, but your convoluted answer proves you are well and truly in it.

The fact is that there is no individual thinker actively thinking thoughts. There is just thought, wherein lies the illusion of thinker. So: the thinker is thought, just as the observer is the observed. No-one could in all seriousness deny such a thing.

Though I have a feeling you will...

"Is" cannot mean all of these or none of these.

When I say this is, I am making the most objective statement anyone can make. Try and figure it out.

As for "thought", that depends upon what you mean by the word. How would you use it outside of philosophy?

It doesn't really matter. Thought as in thoughts, thought as in dreams, thought as in ideas, whatever. It's a stupid word anyway. The point is there is no thinker.

[JazzRemington]

now it is a referring to a person
refers to someone
something like a person

Ah, the deluded belief in the individual. You are totally shackled to duality.

Are you going to answer my question as to how you are using the word "thinker" or continue dismissing it using more vague and confused language?


You seem to want to define the word in abstract from any particular use in ordinary language, suggesting either a new definition or the possibility of "thinker" being all of these and more at once.
I am trying to get you to think outside the box, but your convoluted answer proves you are well and truly in it.

Philosophers have been arguing and fighting for centuries over questions like "what is the self" or "if nature is objective or subjective". If anything, you should "think outside the box." I did not propose a "convoluted answer". I only asked you what you mean, and you cannot explain what you mean without using more vague and dismissive terminology and statements.


The fact is that there is no individual thinker actively thinking thoughts. There is just thought, wherein lies the illusion of thinker.

If you say so.


So: the thinker is thought, just as the observer is the observed. No-one could in all seriousness deny such a thing.

That's not an argument. You can't use a vague statement to prove another statement. Asking you what you mean by a word is not denying anything. We haven't even gotten to that point yet; there is nothing TO deny.


When I say this is, I am making the most objective statement anyone can make. Try and figure it out.

As I've said, "is" can't mean all of what I've posted. Pick one. You cannot mean all of them at once. Otherwise, you've devised a new meaning of "is" and I would like to see how that works out.


As for "thought", that depends upon what you mean by the word. How would you use it outside of philosophy?

It doesn't really matter.

Yes it does. Otherwise, you're just babbling.


Thought as in thoughts, thought as in dreams, thought as in ideas, whatever. It's a stupid word anyway. The point is there is no thinker.

You keep saying that, but you can't show that this is the case.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

The New Consciousness:


The point is there is no thinker.

I do not wish to be rude, but your post certainly proved that, at least in your case.

May I therefore suggest you change your name to 'The New Confusion'?

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Dooga:



The difference is, as I have pointed out to you before, that the truth of philosophical theses follows from the alleged meaning of the words they contain. This is not so in Physics, or the rest of science, where theories and hypotheses are counted as true/false only after the evidence confirming/refuting them has turned up.

And this means that all of traditional philosophy is just self-important linguistic idealism -- where fundamental truths about 'reality' follow from thought/language alone.

Is all of space-related physics done with an evidence basis? I was under the impression that some of it wasn't confirmed. For a better example, there are the evolutionary "missing links." Given what we know and our evidence-based theories, it seems reasonable to believe in missing link "X." In fact, some of these predictions have been verified.

It doesn't seem like science "always" requires verification to adopt a particular viewpoint. Theories can be used as building blocks to potentially arrive at truths which, consequently, end up proving the original theory in some manner (I think if I remember correctly).

I just think it gives science a bit too much credit to claim all their theories are directly verified. I agree that it's founded in verification, of course.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

It appears that The New Consciousness is some kind of idealistic monist. That's hilarious, TNC. Why can't you think the world better? Position thus refuted.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga:


Is all of space-related physics done with an evidence basis? I was under the impression that some of it wasn't confirmed. For a better example, there are the evolutionary "missing links." Given what we know and our evidence-based theories, it seems reasonable to believe in missing link "X." In fact, some of these predictions have been verified.

Indeed it is; unless the evidence turns up, any theories in these fields remain hypothetical.

But, one thing is for sure: the truth of scientific theories does not follow from the meaning of the words they contain, as is the case with the theses in traditional philosophy.

And, of course, 'verified prediction' is another word for evidence.


It doesn't seem like science "always" requires verification to adopt a particular viewpoint. Theories can be used as building blocks to potentially arrive at truths which, consequently, end up proving the original theory in some manner (I think if I remember correctly).

Perhaps you can quote us just one theory in the entire history of science which is held true, but for which there in no supporting evidence?

[ZeroNowhere]

It appears that The New Consciousness is some kind of idealistic monist. That's hilarious, TNC. Why can't you think the world better? Position thus refuted.
Because they do not exist, of course. You are evidently being dragged down by a belief in the individual; remember, the thinker is thought, and forget all that you may have learned in elementary school English.

[The New Consciousness]

Are you going to answer my question as to how you are using the word "thinker" or continue dismissing it using more vague and confused language?

Thinker = illusory belief that there is some independent will actively thinking discontinuous thoughts, separate from the rest of the world.

Philosophers have been arguing and fighting for centuries over questions like "what is the self" or "if nature is objective or subjective". If anything, you should "think outside the box." I did not propose a "convoluted answer". I only asked you what you mean, and you cannot explain what you mean without using more vague and dismissive terminology and statements.

You are dismissing it because it sounds simple. Fair enough. I will elaborate.

When I say the thinker is thought I am saying that there is no such thing as an independent individual armed with volition, separate from the world. There is, at the end of the day, only this i.e, what is happening right now. Anything else is an assumption.

What I am trying to destroy is the myth of the thinker, the individual, this independent entity we call 'I', separate from the rest of the world. The fact is there is no separation. Everything is united in one, nondual whole. This can be experienced directly as truth RIGHT NOW, because the real 'I' is simply the awareness that brings thought and all other objects into light. When this is seen all illusions of separation disappear. I cannot be thought, the body, emotions, if I am aware of them, this is obvious. What am I then? I am simply awareness, or consciousness if you will. Consciousness cannot ever be experienced, just as the knife cannot cut itself, the eye cannot see itself and the hand cannot grasp itself. However what awareness perceives, the material world, points back to awareness and is in fact totally one with awareness as there can be no split between awareness and the objects of awareness: they are two sides of the same coin. Now when this is seen it is immediately understood that there is no separate individual, but just this, totally one.

Also the simple truth of nondoership is also evident in this discovery, for if there is only this, in oneness, how could there ever be an individual there discontinuously making decisions with some kind of 'free will'? In actual fact there is just this. It's the most honest statement anyone could make. As soon as a label arises or a judgement or a comparison, we are then expressing only a fragment of the truth. Thought is the child of memory, memory is conditioned by the specifics of cause and effect. From there thought derives its subjective value systems, convictions, judgments. This is an organic, self-perpetuating process. You don't go round actively assimilating memories, it is done automatically. The conditioning predetermines everything and all decisions are biased by it. When we make judgements about the world through the prism of conditioned thought, naturally our judgements are subjective and conditioned. If we are to be at all serious about things and if we really hunger for the truth, thought will not reveal anything new to us beyond our conditioning. Also, as thought is but a part of the overall experience to try to find truth therein is naturally limiting and a hindrance. If we go to the root of 'I' we find that we are not thought but the simple awareness that brings thought into existence. Now if we start our investigations from there certain facts become evident: there is no division, there are no individuals, there is just this - i.e. what we are experiencing. It is also understood that there is no individual volition, only a constantly assimilating conditioning and that there is nothing beyond this, the present moment. Even thoughts of past and future all occur here and now. You cannot escape that. You are consciousness: nonlocal, unlimited and always here and now, even if you never realise this it is irrefutably true.

When we investigate and draw conclusions about the world through the prism of conditioned thought, we are essentially trying to objectify the subjectivity of our experience. This, as you can understand, automatically leads to further subjectivity and confusion. True objectivity, if any such thing exists, can only exist when we totally accept the subjectivity of experience. When you attend to your direct experience of things, you make no assumptions, you are perceiving things as they are, in all their subjectivity.

At the end of the day we are all alone, alone in our nondual experience.

It appears that The New Consciousness is some kind of idealistic monist. That's hilarious, TNC. Why can't you think the world better? Position thus refuted.

Monistic idealism believes in some form of free will. I think free will is an illusion. I'm a nondualist, if you must give me a label. There is no room for idealism there. If anything it's a total acceptance of dialectical materialism.

[JazzRemington]

Are you going to answer my question as to how you are using the word "thinker" or continue dismissing it using more vague and confused language?

Thinker = illusory belief that there is some independent will actively thinking discontinuous thoughts, separate from the rest of the world.

You don't appear to understand the meaning of "thinker" if you think a person is a belief. You're just speaking nonsense now. The -er at the end of "think" suggests a person (singular) "doing thinking".


When I say the thinker is thought I am saying that there is no such thing as an independent individual armed with volition, separate from the world. There is, at the end of the day, only this i.e, what is happening right now. Anything else is an assumption.

This is nonsense. I'm not even sure you understand you're own crackpot belief. You realize you've just said that an illusionary belief is thought, which is a tautology according to your gibberish.


What I am trying to destroy is the myth of the thinker, the individual, this independent entity we call 'I', separate from the rest of the world.

You're doing a bad job of it, then. You realize that if you "don't exist" then what you wrote doesn't either?


The fact is there is no separation. Everything is united in one, nondual whole.

If you say so.


This can be experienced directly as truth RIGHT NOW, because the real 'I' is simply the awareness that brings thought and all other objects into light.

No, "I" is a personal pronoun referring to the person who is "doing" the verb in a particular sentence. "Truth" isn't an experience, either.


I cannot be thought, the body, emotions, if I am aware of them, this is obvious.

You just said that "thinker is thought" and that "the real I is awareness". But now you're stating that you aren't thought because you're "aware of it"? Make up your mind.


What am I then? I am simply awareness, or consciousness if you will. Consciousness cannot ever be experienced, just as the knife cannot cut itself, the eye cannot see itself and the hand cannot grasp itself.

You just said that if you are "aware of thought" then you cannot "be thought". Also, "consciousness" is a medical term that means something like "being awake and aware of one's surroundings." You can experience, or have, consciousness.


However what awareness perceives, the material world, points back to awareness and is in fact totally one with awareness as there can be no split between awareness and the objects of awareness: they are two sides of the same coin. Now when this is seen it is immediately understood that there is no separate individual, but just this, totally one.

This entire paragraph is just a mess of psycho-babble. "Awareness" is an abstract noun and "perceive" is a verb meaning something like "to see". Abstract nouns cannot perceive anything, period. You're claiming that "awareness perceives awareness," which is nonsense and another tautology.


Also the simple truth of nondoership is also evident in this discovery, for if there is only this, in oneness, how could there ever be an individual there discontinuously making decisions with some kind of 'free will'? In actual fact there is just this. It's the most honest statement anyone could make. As soon as a label arises or a judgement or a comparison, we are then expressing only a fragment of the truth. Thought is the child of memory, memory is conditioned by the specifics of cause and effect. From there thought derives its subjective value systems, convictions, judgments. This is an organic, self-perpetuating process. You don't go round actively assimilating memories, it is done automatically. The conditioning predetermines everything and all decisions are biased by it. When we make judgements about the world through the prism of conditioned thought, naturally our judgements are subjective and conditioned. If we are to be at all serious about things and if we really hunger for the truth, thought will not reveal anything new to us beyond our conditioning. Also, as thought is but a part of the overall experience to try to find truth therein is naturally limiting and a hindrance. If we go to the root of 'I' we find that we are not thought but the simple awareness that brings thought into existence. Now if we start our investigations from there certain facts become evident: there is no division, there are no individuals, there is just this - i.e. what we are experiencing. It is also understood that there is no individual volition, only a constantly assimilating conditioning and that there is nothing beyond this, the present moment. Even thoughts of past and future all occur here and now. You cannot escape that. You are consciousness: nonlocal, unlimited and always here and now, even if you never realise this it is irrefutably true.

:laugh:


When we investigate and draw conclusions about the world through the prism of conditioned thought, we are essentially trying to objectify the subjectivity of our experience. This, as you can understand, automatically leads to further subjectivity and confusion. True objectivity, if any such thing exists, can only exist when we totally accept the subjectivity of experience. When you attend to your direct experience of things, you make no assumptions, you are perceiving things as they are, in all their subjectivity.

What sense is there to speak of subjectivity without the possibility of objectiveness? If everything is subjective, then "thinker is not thought" is not true (if it were, then there is objectivity, which means you've produced a contradiction). Again, you're just spouting nonsense you probably just read from some equally nonsensical religious tract.


At the end of the day we are all alone, alone in our nondual experience.

:rolleyes:


Monistic idealism believes in some form of free will. I think free will is an illusion. I'm a nondualist, if you must give me a label. There is no room for idealism there. If anything it's a total acceptance of dialectical materialism.

But, if everything is subjective, then "free will" isn't an illusion. See what I did there, btw?

[The New Consciousness]

You don't appear to understand the meaning of "thinker" if you think a person is a belief. You're just speaking nonsense now. The -er at the end of "think" suggests a person (singular) "doing thinking".

This is nonsense. I'm not even sure you understand you're own crackpot belief. You realize you've just said that an illusionary belief is thought, which is a tautology according to your gibberish.

Apologies for the ambiguity. The word 'thinker' (as with all other -ers) originates out of the belief (delusion) that there is an individual agent actively thinking thoughts.

You're doing a bad job of it, then. You realize that if you "don't exist" then what you wrote doesn't either?

How can 'I' be writing this, isn't that just another assumption? What is in fact writing this is the culmination of an assimilation process that is crowned with the delusional title: 'me'.

'I' am writing different things to 'you', because 'your' conditioning is totally different to 'mine'.

Those terms in parenthesis are totally unnecessary in this sentence. What is happening here in this little thread is the clashing of two different conditionings. These conditionings haven't been chosen actively by some independent entity, they have developed totally under their own steam in relation to themselves and the world around them, like some great intellectual tree. It didn't need anyone to make it grow, noone stood there commanding it to grow. It grew by itself, organically. All we did was to witness the growth of our trees. In your case you still believe you are the tree. I don't. I know that I am the witness of the tree and not the tree.

No, "I" is a personal pronoun referring to the person who is "doing" the verb in a particular sentence. "Truth" isn't an experience, either.

Wrong. There is no doer. Thought arises by itself as a response to stimuli and from there all doership occurs. In this it is clearly evident that there is no individual selecting and deciding. It is a self perpetuating process. Totally automatic. All you do is witness it. What has happened is that the witnessing has confused itself with the witnessed: thought.

You just said that "thinker is thought" and that "the real I is awareness". But now you're stating that you aren't thought because you're "aware of it"? Make up your mind.

There is no doership. There is only awareness. Awareness is not willed, it is constant. Without awareness you wouldnt be reading this now, you wouldnt be feeling the seat underneath you, hearing the whir of your computer. Awareness is primary. Thought arises in that space. You are the awareness. You witness thought. You dont manipulate it. It manipulates itself. You have confused yourself with it.

When I say the real I is awareness, you must understand that this I is not like any I you could imagine. It has no qualities. It simply is, always there. Undeniably present. It is not some person or individual doing things. It is the reality of your experience.

You just said that if you are "aware of thought" then you cannot "be thought".

Obviously

Also, "consciousness" is a medical term that means something like "being awake and aware of one's surroundings." You can experience, or have, consciousness.

Consciousness is just another term for awareness, that which perceives or even illuminates the world.

This entire paragraph is just a mess of psycho-babble.

Dont just dismiss it.

"Awareness" is an abstract noun and "perceive" is a verb meaning something like "to see".

Ah the problem of language...I use the term in the same way as experiencing or witnessing.

Abstract nouns cannot perceive anything, period. You're claiming that "awareness perceives awareness," which is nonsense and another tautology.

Nope. I am saying that awareness cannot be experienced because it is the point of departure of experience. Its like a knife trying to cut itself. However all that awareness witnesses is actually evidence for awareness, like a mirror reflects light. In direct experience there are no distances, no separation and no locality. So we say awareness is nondual. As direct experience is the basis of everything, everything is nondual. Its not a concept.

What sense is there to speak of subjectivity without the possibility of objectiveness?

Youre quite right. Both are absurd terms. There is only ever what is. Anything else is an assumption. Do you not see the sense, the clear logic in this?

If everything is subjective, then "thinker is not thought" is not true
(if it were, then there is objectivity, which means you've produced a contradiction).

There is objectivity in being aware of subjectivity. Thats my whole point. When awareness sees that it is not thought and that thought is just another component of its subjective experience, then there is a degree of clarity and understanding there which could be called objectivity.

Again, you're just spouting nonsense you probably just read from some equally nonsensical religious tract.

Most of this comes out of my own personal inquiries into my experience, actually.

But, if everything is subjective, then "free will" isn't an illusion. See what I did there, btw?

It is an illusion like everything else. Nothing you experience can even be said to be real. Theres no way at all of proving it. So free will like everything else experienced is just another illusion like everything else in your subjective experience. Of course if you believe in mirages and illusions to you they will seem fairly real. This is called being subjective. When we are aware of all these illusions, this is called being objective.

[JazzRemington]

Apologies for the ambiguity. The word 'thinker' (as with all other -ers) originates out of the belief (delusion) that there is an individual agent actively thinking thoughts.

Again, since you claim everything is subjective then you are contradicting yourself by stating this as a fact.


How can 'I' be writing this, isn't that just another assumption? What is in fact writing this is the culmination of an assimilation process that is crowned with the delusional title: 'me'.

If you say so. :rolleyes: But you're right. I am assuming you wrote it. Who else would be stupid enough to believe things like this?


'I' am writing different things to 'you', because 'your' conditioning is totally different to 'mine'.

I'm not even sure you understand what this statement means.


Those terms in parenthesis are totally unnecessary in this sentence. What is happening here in this little thread is the clashing of two different conditionings. These conditionings haven't been chosen actively by some independent entity, they have developed totally under their own steam in relation to themselves and the world around them, like some great intellectual tree. It didn't need anyone to make it grow, noone stood there commanding it to grow. It grew by itself, organically. All we did was to witness the growth of our trees. In your case you still believe you are the tree. I don't. I know that I am the witness of the tree and not the tree.

Again, if everything is subjective, then you cannot claim to objectively know something. You keep contradicting yourself.


Wrong. There is no doer.

Yes there is. See how that works?


Thought arises by itself as a response to stimuli and from there all doership occurs.

That depends on what you mean by thought.


In this it is clearly evident that there is no individual selecting and deciding. It is a self perpetuating process. Totally automatic. All you do is witness it. What has happened is that the witnessing has confused itself with the witnessed: thought.

*sigh*


There is no doership. There is only awareness. Awareness is not willed, it is constant. Without awareness you wouldnt be reading this now, you wouldnt be feeling the seat underneath you, hearing the whir of your computer. Awareness is primary. Thought arises in that space. You are the awareness. You witness thought. You dont manipulate it. It manipulates itself. You have confused yourself with it.

I don't even know where to begin with this mess.


When I say the real I is awareness, you must understand that this I is not like any I you could imagine. It has no qualities. It simply is, always there. Undeniably present. It is not some person or individual doing things. It is the reality of your experience.

Um, ok?


Obviously

Yes, you've obviously contradicted yourself.


Consciousness is just another term for awareness, that which perceives or even illuminates the world.

No, it's a medical term. Period. Philosophers have abducted the word and claimed that it stands for some metaphysical horse shit that they can't explain to anyone.


Dont just dismiss it.

Why not? I can't make heads or tales of what the flying fuck you were saying. I'm beginning to doubt that you don't even understand what you are saying. It's like you read some ignorant-ass book on solipsism or something and are just repeating what you've read like a parrot who's learned to speak.


Ah the problem of language...I use the term in the same way as experiencing or witnessing.

No, you don't get your own personal definition of words. That's not how language works. When you actually use the word with your own personal definition, you just produce gibberish, which suggests that you don't understand the word.


Nope. I am saying that awareness cannot be experienced because it is the point of departure of experience. Its like a knife trying to cut itself. However all that awareness witnesses is actually evidence for awareness, like a mirror reflects light. In direct experience there are no distances, no separation and no locality. So we say awareness is nondual. As direct experience is the basis of everything, everything is nondual. Its not a concept.[B]

Unfortunately, you keep repeating the same psycho-mumbojumbo that apparently you (and only you) understand.


Youre quite right. Both are absurd terms. There is only ever what is. Anything else is an assumption. Do you not see the sense, the clear logic in this?

"There is only ever what is" is a nonsense phrase. The word "is" is a verb that doesn't designate "existence" in and of itself.


There is objectivity in being aware of subjectivity. Thats my whole point. When awareness sees that it is not thought and that thought is just another component of its subjective experience, then there is a degree of clarity and understanding there which could be called objectivity.

If you are objectively aware that everything is subjective, then the world isn't subjective.


Most of this comes out of my own personal inquiries into my experience, actually.

Then you need to get out more.


It is an illusion like everything else. Nothing you experience can even be said to be real. Theres no way at all of proving it. So free will like everything else experienced is just another illusion like everything else in your subjective experience. Of course if you believe in mirages and illusions to you they will seem fairly real. This is called being subjective. When we are aware of all these illusions, this is called being objective.

Again, this is more patent nonsense. I don't even know where to begin with this nightmare you call a philosophy.

[RHIZOMES]

Marxism is a philosophy...

In fact I'm pretty sure most people here don't know much about any good philosophy, just the stereotype of wanky middle-class psuedo-intellectual wannabe bohemians. There's a lot of idiotic "philosophy" yes, but I think saying all philosophy is like that is just playing into a societal myth which I personally think just promotes mass stupidity and ignorance.

[JazzRemington]

Marxism is a philosophy...

In fact I'm pretty sure most people here don't know much about any good philosophy, just the stereotype of wanky middle-class psuedo-intellectual wannabe bohemians. There's a lot of idiotic "philosophy" yes, but I think saying all philosophy is like that is just playing into a societal myth which I personally think just promotes mass stupidity and ignorance.

All philosophy is meaningless wordplay. Period.

[The New Consciousness]

The point I'm trying to make is that you cannot hope to draw meaningful conclusions about reality through the prism of thought. I am simply inviting you to inquire into your experience which is the actual concrete basis of your existence. Thought is but an aspect of the totality of your experience, yet you restrict all your philosophical inquiries to that domain. Why not address the real starting point - your awareness? Surely, if you are at all serious about reaching some kind of understanding of life, you would endeavour to actual inquire into your own nature? If you did you would immediately realise that you are not thought and that thought is only an element of the totality of your experience, which is the simple presence of awareness. Basing all your analyses and judgments on your direct experience of life which is always present and undeniable and the actual basis of your existence is the only way you will actually be able to reach meaningful conclusions about life. Afterall, anything else is assumption, speculation, or worse, a leap of faith. You are not being rigourous enough. Your inquiries are shallow. You still haven't addressed this basic point.

[Hit The North]

The word 'thinker' (as with all other -ers) originates out of the belief (delusion) that there is an individual agent actively thinking thoughts.


This is a ridiculous statement. If there are no individuals thinking thoughts then where do thoughts come from? The ether? God? The idea that thoughts exists independently of the human agents who think them is the real delusion.


Your assertion can be shown in its absurdity if we substitute words:


The word 'builder' (as with all other -ers) originates out of the belief (delusion) that there is an individual agent actively building buildings.Presumably you'd argue that the buildings erect themselves!

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

Are you going to answer my question as to how you are using the word "thinker" or continue dismissing it using more vague and confused language?

Thinker = illusory belief that there is some independent will actively thinking discontinuous thoughts, separate from the rest of the world.

Philosophers have been arguing and fighting for centuries over questions like "what is the self" or "if nature is objective or subjective". If anything, you should "think outside the box." I did not propose a "convoluted answer". I only asked you what you mean, and you cannot explain what you mean without using more vague and dismissive terminology and statements.

You are dismissing it because it sounds simple. Fair enough. I will elaborate.

When I say the thinker is thought I am saying that there is no such thing as an independent individual armed with volition, separate from the world. There is, at the end of the day, only this i.e, what is happening right now. Anything else is an assumption.

What I am trying to destroy is the myth of the thinker, the individual, this independent entity we call 'I', separate from the rest of the world. The fact is there is no separation. Everything is united in one, nondual whole. This can be experienced directly as truth RIGHT NOW, because the real 'I' is simply the awareness that brings thought and all other objects into light. When this is seen all illusions of separation disappear. I cannot be thought, the body, emotions, if I am aware of them, this is obvious. What am I then? I am simply awareness, or consciousness if you will. Consciousness cannot ever be experienced, just as the knife cannot cut itself, the eye cannot see itself and the hand cannot grasp itself. However what awareness perceives, the material world, points back to awareness and is in fact totally one with awareness as there can be no split between awareness and the objects of awareness: they are two sides of the same coin. Now when this is seen it is immediately understood that there is no separate individual, but just this, totally one.

Also the simple truth of nondoership is also evident in this discovery, for if there is only this, in oneness, how could there ever be an individual there discontinuously making decisions with some kind of 'free will'? In actual fact there is just this. It's the most honest statement anyone could make. As soon as a label arises or a judgement or a comparison, we are then expressing only a fragment of the truth. Thought is the child of memory, memory is conditioned by the specifics of cause and effect. From there thought derives its subjective value systems, convictions, judgments. This is an organic, self-perpetuating process. You don't go round actively assimilating memories, it is done automatically. The conditioning predetermines everything and all decisions are biased by it. When we make judgements about the world through the prism of conditioned thought, naturally our judgements are subjective and conditioned. If we are to be at all serious about things and if we really hunger for the truth, thought will not reveal anything new to us beyond our conditioning. Also, as thought is but a part of the overall experience to try to find truth therein is naturally limiting and a hindrance. If we go to the root of 'I' we find that we are not thought but the simple awareness that brings thought into existence. Now if we start our investigations from there certain facts become evident: there is no division, there are no individuals, there is just this - i.e. what we are experiencing. It is also understood that there is no individual volition, only a constantly assimilating conditioning and that there is nothing beyond this, the present moment. Even thoughts of past and future all occur here and now. You cannot escape that. You are consciousness: nonlocal, unlimited and always here and now, even if you never realise this it is irrefutably true.

When we investigate and draw conclusions about the world through the prism of conditioned thought, we are essentially trying to objectify the subjectivity of our experience. This, as you can understand, automatically leads to further subjectivity and confusion. True objectivity, if any such thing exists, can only exist when we totally accept the subjectivity of experience. When you attend to your direct experience of things, you make no assumptions, you are perceiving things as they are, in all their subjectivity.

At the end of the day we are all alone, alone in our nondual experience.

It appears that The New Consciousness is some kind of idealistic monist. That's hilarious, TNC. Why can't you think the world better? Position thus refuted.

Monistic idealism believes in some form of free will. I think free will is an illusion. I'm a nondualist, if you must give me a label. There is no room for idealism there. If anything it's a total acceptance of dialectical materialism.

This is hardly the most interllectual contribution, but Wtf are you on about?

[JazzRemington]

I'm only going to spend time ridiculing the statements I can make heads or tales of.


The point I'm trying to make is that you cannot hope to draw meaningful conclusions about reality through the prism of thought.

Depends on what you mean by "thought". Because if you mean "speaking to one's self" then what you said is a lie and you've contradicted yourself. You claim this, but yet you have no "direct experience" with me so you cannot draw any "meaningful conclusions" about me. Thus, you cannot conclude that "I don't exist" and you are just "assuming." Ignoring your vague use of "meaning" and "reality," of course.


I am simply inviting you to inquire into your experience which is the actual concrete basis of your existence.

My experience in what? Research, movies, computers? What kind of experience are you talking about? You are not being specific. Experience can mean "prior experience" (e.g. "in my experience, that wouldn't work"), or something like "having done before" (e.g. "I have experience in Excel and Powerpoint") or something like a personal encounter (e.g. "my experience with the bear was frightening"). What use of the term are you meaning? "Experience" can only mean one of these, and only one of these.


Thought is but an aspect of the totality of your experience, yet you restrict all your philosophical inquiries to that domain.

You are claiming that a single aspect of a thing defines it's "totality". This is a logical fallacy.


Why not address the real starting point - your awareness? Surely, if you are at all serious about reaching some kind of understanding of life, you would endeavour to actual inquire into your own nature?

:laugh: <- see what I'm doing there?


If you did you would immediately realise that you are not thought and that thought is only an element of the totality of your experience, which is the simple presence of awareness.

If you mean "something spoken to one's self" as thought, then that's obvious because I'm not the same exact thing that happens as a result of something I've done. Stop wasting my time.


Basing all your analyses and judgments on your direct experience of life which is always present and undeniable and the actual basis of your existence is the only way you will actually be able to reach meaningful conclusions about life. Afterall, anything else is assumption, speculation, or worse, a leap of faith. You are not being rigourous enough. Your inquiries are shallow. You still haven't addressed this basic point.

You are seriously going to tell me that Australia doesn't exist because I don't have a "direct experience" with it? What the fuck are you talking about?

[The New Consciousness]

This is a ridiculous statement. If there are no individuals thinking thoughts then where do thoughts come from? The ether? God? The idea that thoughts exists independently of the human agents who think them is the real delusion.

You need only look into your own experience of a thought. Is it willed or does it just spontaneously arise as a reaction to stimuli? If you think it is the former and that you are a thinker actively thinking thoughts, then you are preposterously claiming that you are discontinuously, independently creating events totally beyond the world of cause and effect and material dialectics. In which case you're an idealist and you are a lost cause.

I'm only going to spend time ridiculing the statements I can make heads or tales of.

Instead of actually thinking about them your only interest is to attack and ridicule them. With such a mindset there is no possibility for learning, you must admit.

Depends on what you mean by "thought". Because if you mean "speaking to one's self" then what you said is a lie and you've contradicted yourself.

What is thought? A very pertinent question. Well let's get down to it shall we?

According to the Oxford Dictionary thought is:

The action or process of thinking; mental action or activity in general, esp. that of the intellect; exercise of the mental faculty; formation and arrangement of ideas in the mind.

There are many others including this one:

A single act or product of thinking; an item of mental activity; something that a person thinks or has thought; a thing that is in the mind, an expression of what is in the mind; an idea, notion.

These definitions are fine but I am taking issue with one aspect: that which I have underlined, the general paradigm that there is an independent thinker actively thinking thoughts.

Now most of you take this totally for granted and that's why you consider my posts to be either outlandish or the product of some deranged person (hence the 'psycho-babble´comment), and it's totally understandable that you should. Afterall, are we not taught from a very young age that we are thinkers, that we are responsible for our thoughts and the consequences of our actions, separated from others and the world, discontinuously exerting our agency of volition with some peripheral influences somewhat guiding us, yes? This is the widespread paradigm of the container metaphor, that we are some entity enclosed in a fleshy body doing this and that totally of our free will and volition, interacting and manipulating the world around us like gods.

Yet it's not hard to see that this notion of the individual, separate from and discontinuous with the rest of the world and time, is in fact a total illusion. If you are going to seriously argue for free will then you are contradicting the totally self-evident FACT of dialectical materialism, or in plain English, cause and effect. If you are arguing for free will you are arguing for idealism, which has been vanquished now for nigh on 150 years.

Now if this isn't preposterous enough in its blind folly it is also a highly dangerous notion to carry around. To really believe that one is separate from the rest of the world, armed with an independent, discontinuous intention, actively thinking thoughts and doing things, is to be totally in denial of the obvious fact of conditioning.

How does conditioning work? A child is born a blank slate. It is simply an experiencing, aware being: experiencing and reacting spontaneously and directly to the world. Then as time goes by it is given an identity: John or Suzy or whatever. As it grows up it becomes more and more convinced that this illusory label is the core of its existence. What has actually happened however is that thought has been subtly assimilating all its experiences into its memory banks and constructing this false identity of John or Suzy or whatever. This is the individual then, a conglomeration of thoughts all unified into one organic, self-perpetuating creature: the ego. This product of situational conditioning and memory is naturally defined and limited by its own specific experiences. Limited as it is naturally it will come into conflict with other, differing conditionings and so we have the seeds of war. All the divisions and sore-points of mankind stem from this: the simple clash of different conditionings, the clash of identities or egos.

You have the national clash: when collective conditionings clash
You have the class clash: when class conditionings clash
You have the racial clash
Gender clash
Community clash
And on and on we go down to the smallest unit

All of these clashes are just varying forms of the same underlying problem: the clash of different conditionings.

Along comes a conditioning who clashes with the clashes of conditionings and calls himself either a religious man or an idealist. He then sets up his own view (based on his own conditioning) on how the world should be and then tries to impose that on others. This is what all political and religious people have been doing for centuries. However it's not that easy. How can you impose your conditioning on others, regardless of how noble and lofty your motives may be, without expecting conflict and chaos? Afterall, no two human beings share the same conditioning, even twins differ enormously.

Now the solution isn't to impose one particular conditioning on another, but to simply understand that conditioning is the problem.

This can only take place when we realise that we are not our conditioning.

Now it becomes plainly obvious that we cannot actually be our conditioning because it is possible to be aware of it. You cannot be that which you are aware of, it stands to reason. As you can actually witness your own conditioning then you are not your conditioning. You can see that what constitutes this 'you' you have believed in for so long is but a thought, nothing more. When this happens you break identification with the ego or your conditioning. It now becomes an aspect of your experience, not the actual central reference point and starting point of your experience.

Then comes the startling realisation that there is no doership, no free will, only witnessing which is your nature, which has always been your nature, before and throughout the development of your conditioning. When you become aware of thought and the thinking process you likewise become aware that there is no active thinking involved. In actual fact what is observed is the organic self-perpetuation of thought as a response to stimuli in the environment and also in reaction to itself. This is not willed. You don't actively decide to think a thought: the thought actually arises by itself.

If I say POLAR BEAR now, an image of a polar bear will emerge in your head. You didn't need to actively think it, it occurred.

So it becomes clear that you don't actively think anything. Thought itself does all the thinking. If we actively did all our thinking we would be able to stop thinking negative thoughts and we would be in total bliss, no? Well the sad fact is we cannot. Negative thoughts will arise by themselves out of the totally natural survival instinct which is the pleasure-pain nexus. That which appears dangerous to the body-mind will incite a pain thought and the opposite. This is totally integrated into the environment. It reacts to and acts upon the world around it. In conclusion, thought is a kind of organism that exists totally independently of any will as a reaction to its surroundings and thus totally bound into the world of cause and effect (which is the only world there is).

You are not it, you only witness it.

You claim this, but yet you have no "direct experience" with me so you cannot draw any "meaningful conclusions" about me.

I cannot even know for sure whether you exist. Quite true.

Thus, you cannot conclude that "I don't exist" and you are just "assuming." Ignoring your vague use of "meaning" and "reality," of course.

I am assuming you exist, quite right, but I have no proof whatsoever. All I know is that I am experiencing right now. Anything else is assumption.

My experience in what? Research, movies, computers?

No no no, your direct experience of what is going on right now.

You are claiming that a single aspect of a thing defines it's "totality". This is a logical fallacy.

Again you have misread my sentence. You do that often. I think you don't even read it. In fact, I think before you have even thought about what I have written you are planning your counter-attack. Not an advisable strategy but never mind.

Thought is but an aspect of the totality of your experience, yet you restrict all your philosophical inquiries to that domain.

Read it again but slowly.

If you mean "something spoken to one's self" as thought, then that's obvious because I'm not the same exact thing that happens as a result of something I've done. Stop wasting my time.

What a clumsy tangle of sentences!

Here we go in simple English so you can understand:

I WITNESS THOUGHT = SO I AM NOT THOUGHT = WHAT AM I? (beginning of an actual meaningful inquiry into reality)

You are seriously going to tell me that Australia doesn't exist because I don't have a "direct experience" with it? What the fuck are you talking about?

Experience of it. Quite right. You can't say with absolute certainty that anything outside your experience exists, if we are going to be at all objective about things. Anything that is not experienced, essentially doesn't exist. You can bring it into hypothetical existence but this is assumption.

[Hit The North]

This is a ridiculous statement. If there are no individuals thinking thoughts then where do thoughts come from? The ether? God? The idea that thoughts exists independently of the human agents who think them is the real delusion.

You need only look into your own experience of a thought. Is it willed or does it just spontaneously arise as a reaction to stimuli? If you think it is the former and that you are a thinker actively thinking thoughts, then you are preposterously claiming that you are discontinuously, independently creating events totally beyond the world of cause and effect and material dialectics. In which case you're an idealist and you are a lost cause.Not at all. Acknowledging the fallacy of free-will, does not mean we have to rid ourselves of the concept of human agency altogether. If you think that material dialectics does this, then you don't understand material dialectics. At least, not the dialectic of Marxism. Meanwhile your insistence that thoughts originate somewhere other than in the human brain, condemns you to idealism as the consequence is that you extend thought into an objective and independent force.

[JazzRemington]

Instead of actually thinking about them your only interest is to attack and ridicule them. With such a mindset there is no possibility for learning, you must admit.

There is nothing to learn with what you've rambled on about. It's just a bunch of word plays, wanna-be existentialism, and bat-shit, nonsensical gibberish.


What is thought? A very pertinent question. Well let's get down to it shall we?No, I asked how are you using the word. Not how it's presented in a dictionary. Words don't give words meaning, their use does.


Now most of you take this totally for granted and that's why you consider my posts to be either outlandish or the product of some deranged person (hence the 'psycho-babble´comment), and it's totally understandable that you should. Afterall, are we not taught from a very young age that we are thinkers, that we are responsible for our thoughts and the consequences of our actions, separated from others and the world, discontinuously exerting our agency of volition with some peripheral influences somewhat guiding us, yes? This is the widespread paradigm of the container metaphor, that we are some entity enclosed in a fleshy body doing this and that totally of our free will and volition, interacting and manipulating the world around us like gods.Can you ever speak without breaking into monologues?


Yet it's not hard to see that this notion of the individual, separate from and discontinuous with the rest of the world and time, is in fact a total illusion.You don't seem to understand the word "individual." Normally, when the word is used, there is a possibility of groups. E.g., an individual computer (as opposed to a group of them), an individual person, individual member of a club, etc. If we cannot speak of "groups" then we cannot speak of "individual". This is nonsense.


If you are going to seriously argue for free will then you are contradicting the totally self-evident FACT of dialectical materialism, or in plain English, cause and effect. If you are arguing for free will you are arguing for idealism, which has been vanquished now for nigh on 150 years.The philosophies of free will and determinism are nonsense. As is dialectical materialism, and Idealism. But, your philosophy (the notion that "individual" doesn't exist, we are all part of a larger collective, etc.) is essentially Idealism. Which doesn't make sense, but apparently your crackpot theories disappeared long ago. If that were the case, then Fukuyama doesn't exist. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man) Which, is nonsense.


How does conditioning work? A child is born a blank slate. It is simply an experiencing, aware being: experiencing and reacting spontaneously and directly to the world.No, things external to individuals "condition" individuals. The social interactions between individuals is what influences peoples beliefs and attitudes, which are further affected by larger social structural concerns (ruling class ideology, position in objective production relations, etc.).


Then as time goes by it is given an identity: John or Suzy or whatever. As it grows up it becomes more and more convinced that this illusory label is the core of its existence. What has actually happened however is that thought has been subtly assimilating all its experiences into its memory banks and constructing this false identity of John or Suzy or whatever. This is the individual then, a conglomeration of thoughts all unified into one organic, self-perpetuating creature: the ego. This product of situational conditioning and memory is naturally defined and limited by its own specific experiences. Limited as it is naturally it will come into conflict with other, differing conditionings and so we have the seeds of war. All the divisions and sore-points of mankind stem from this: the simple clash of different conditionings, the clash of identities or egos. *yawn* So much from the person who wants people to think outside the box, that he repeats the same tired bullshit used for centuries.


All of these clashes are just varying forms of the same underlying problem: the clash of different conditionings.Abstract concepts can't "clash". People clash with each other. I would ask you how it's possible for abstract concept to clash, but I don't think I can take reading more of your word vomit.


This can only take place when we realise that [B]we are not our conditioning.Of course not. "Conditioning" is the noun for of "to condition". Again, you are further misusing language. "Being aware" has nothing to do with anything here.


If I say POLAR BEAR now, an image of a polar bear will emerge in your head. You didn't need to actively think it, it occurred.According to your nonsense, this is an assumption because you have no direct experience with me.


I cannot even know for sure whether you exist. Quite true.Then stop wasting my fucking time telling me you know all these wonderful things about things you have no direct experience with.


No no no, your direct experience of what is going on right now.Well, I'm using my computer to tell you how much of an ass you are.


Again you have misread my sentence. You do that often. I think you don't even read it. In fact, I think before you have even thought about what I have written you are planning your counter-attack. Not an advisable strategy but never mind.I can't make heads of tales of your garbage. But you're right. First you said that "thinker is thought" and then "thinker = illusionary belief" an then "thinker is the result of illusionary belief". You don't even know what the flying fudge you are talking about.


What a clumsy tangle of sentences!But yet, it makes sense. Which is the least I can say for your asinine beliefs.


I WITNESS THOUGHT = SO I AM NOT THOUGHT = WHAT AM I? (beginning of an actual meaningful inquiry into reality)Again, you don't seem to understand the very words you are using. If you look how the word "witness" is used in ordinary language (not this awful monolithic nonsense you've concocted for yourself), you would see that the entirety of the above is total nonsense. You don't "witness" thought. Thought is something that happens by thinking. You think thoughts, not "witness them." You further seem to be conflating the result of an action (thinking) with the person doing the action (thinker). So the phrase "so I am not thought" is a much nonsense as "so I am thought". As for who you are, I don't know and I don't care. I know what I am and I am what I am, because I'm Pop-Eye the sailor man.


Experience of it. Quite right. You can't say with absolute certainty that anything outside your experience exists, if we are going to be at all objective about things. Anything that is not experienced, essentially doesn't exist. You can bring it into hypothetical existence but this is assumption.I wonder what the Australians would think of that. Oh that's right. They don't exist either.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Dooga:



Indeed it is; unless the evidence turns up, any theories in these fields remain hypothetical.

But, one thing is for sure: the truth of scientific theories does not follow from the meaning of the words they contain, as is the case with the theses in traditional philosophy.

And, of course, 'verified prediction' is another word for evidence.

Perhaps you can quote us just one theory in the entire history of science which is held true, but for which there in no supporting evidence?

The problem with examples is that almost anything can be seen as having supporting evidence. What classifies as evidence is not clearly defined. Science simply believes what "the most evidence supports." I don't see any benefit to me listening off outdated theories. One will be have evidence, another will be motivated by non-scientific concerns, etc. There are always elaborate ways to defend theories.

I simply think that on the basis of evaluating current facts about the world, philosophy can information of some sort. It seems to me that competing philosophical theories are often compared. One theory is usually better than the other, in my experience.

Maybe you can categorize what philosophy should do as something other than truth. However, it seems like it has some sort of use. Science provides answers to things, but it doesn't provide answers to certain human problems.

For instance, we can track being happy or sad to processes x, y, and z. We can explain the evolutionary benefit of emotion X. We can also have the best artists pain pictures and write novels about the emotion. I still don't think everything has been properly dealt with when it comes to these emotions, after all this. Unexplainable phenomenon are one escape people use, but I don't see the basis of assuming that.

I don't really have an argument here. I like science, and I think it explains most things. However, I just can't see a world of simply science and art as satisfactory.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Dooga:


The problem with examples is that almost anything can be seen as having supporting evidence. What classifies as evidence is not clearly defined. Science simply believes what "the most evidence supports." I don't see any benefit to me listening off outdated theories. One will be have evidence, another will be motivated by non-scientific concerns, etc. There are always elaborate ways to defend theories.

But, in philosophy, if there is any 'supporting evidence' it is post hoc, and highly sketchy (just look at the 'evidence' that Descartes appealed to, for example; it would be lauhed out of court even in an undergraduate science essay, even of his day; comapre it with the careful work of Tycho Brahe, or Darwin, for example). As I noted, the truth of philosophical theses follows from thought alone, making the 'evidential ceremony' that sometimes follows an empty gesture.

It isn't irrelevant in science, it's absolutely necessary.


I simply think that on the basis of evaluating current facts about the world, philosophy can [contain] information of some sort. It seems to me that competing philosophical theories are often compared. One theory is usually better than the other, in my experience.

Well, let's see an example.


Maybe you can categorize what philosophy should do as something other than truth. However, it seems like it has some sort of use. Science provides answers to things, but it doesn't provide answers to certain human problems.

Indeed, it does have another 'function': the clarification of our thoughts and the exposure of the linguistic errors that underlie traditional philosophy, as Wittgenstein noted.

You still seem to want to cling onto it as a sort of super-science.


For instance, we can track being happy or sad to processes x, y, and z. We can explain the evolutionary benefit of emotion X. We can also have the best artists pain pictures and write novels about the emotion. I still don't think everything has been properly dealt with when it comes to these emotions, after all this. Unexplainable phenomenon are one escape people use, but I don't see the basis of assuming that.

Well, this looks like it belongs in science. The rest perhaps we can leave to novellists and psychologists. I fail to see what philosophy has to offer (over and above the things I listed earlier).

[JazzRemington]

The problem with examples is that almost anything can be seen as having supporting evidence. What classifies as evidence is not clearly defined. Science simply believes what "the most evidence supports." I don't see any benefit to me listening off outdated theories. One will be have evidence, another will be motivated by non-scientific concerns, etc. There are always elaborate ways to defend theories.

In social science research (and most likely also in hard science research), we have a concept called "measurement validity." Basically, if a purported measure of something cannot measure what it claims it can measure, this throws the results into serious doubt. Philosophy suffers this because its terms and concepts are too vague to operationalize properly to the point where we can produce a valid measure. Even when we can effectively operationalize a concept and make a valid measure, it's still possible that there is problems with the validity of the measure and how the concept being measured is constructed. This is somewhat the case in hard sciences (compare how many studies have "stood the test of time" versus those that have not, based on improper operationalization and/or misunderstanding the concepts used), but with the hard sciences it's relatively easier to produce what could be considered good evidence, because the terms and concepts used are a hell of a lot clearer and more coherent than those used in philosophy. Basically, using evidence to support a philosophical theory always suffers from something like confirmation bias - no matter what, they're always right.


I simply think that on the basis of evaluating current facts about the world, philosophy can information of some sort. It seems to me that competing philosophical theories are often compared. One theory is usually better than the other, in my experience.You can compare them as one can produce a comparative work for some philosophy class, such as a book that compares classical era philosophy with modern era (Marx's early philosophical works compared to Plato, or whatever). I think there's a field within philosophy called "comparative philosophy". But it's no good to say that one philosophical theory is better than others at explaining things. It is the case that often we are reduced to using a scientific theory to explain a particular phenomenon because it's the best we have at the time; however, with philosophical theories the terms are far too vague and confused to be of any real use at explaining anything.


Maybe you can categorize what philosophy should do as something other than truth. However, it seems like it has some sort of use. Science provides answers to things, but it doesn't provide answers to certain human problems.What sort of problems are we talking about? "The meaning of life" is not a genuine problem, nor is "why are we here" or "what is truth", etc.


For instance, we can track being happy or sad to processes x, y, and z. We can explain the evolutionary benefit of emotion X. We can also have the best artists pain pictures and write novels about the emotion. I still don't think everything has been properly dealt with when it comes to these emotions, after all this. Unexplainable phenomenon are one escape people use, but I don't see the basis of assuming that. But explaining evolutionary benefits (as a evolutionary psychologist would) is essentially just-so stories. But you can't really "explain emotions" in the sense of trying to explain just how angry or happy you are. You just have them, you are happy or sad or whatever. There is a physiological explanation to emotions (endorphins and what have you), but I'm not sure of the validity of such explanations. But if you are talking about questions like "what is the right thing to do, here", philosophy can't help - that's an ethical problem. Simply asking "what the right thing to do" is suggests you already have a concept of right in an ethical sense. How would you have been able to use the word meaningfully if you didn't know what it meant?

[The New Consciousness]

There is nothing to learn with what you've rambled on about. It's just a bunch of word plays, wanna-be existentialism, and bat-shit, nonsensical gibberish.

What a constructive post! Why the diatribe?

No, I asked how are you using the word. Not how it's presented in a dictionary. Words don't give words meaning, their use does.

I am using the word in exactly the same way as the dictionary but with a slight modification, as I made clear.

Can you ever speak without breaking into monologues?

I wasn't aware we were speaking. Frankly I don't know why I bothered writing all that as you clearly haven't addressed any of the points I made. Your only recourse so far has been to insult my posts.

You don't seem to understand the word "individual." Normally, when the word is used, there is a possibility of groups. E.g., an individual computer (as opposed to a group of them), an individual person, individual member of a club, etc. If we cannot speak of "groups" then we cannot speak of "individual". This is nonsense.

The individual person as a conditioned body-mind.

Who said we cannot speak of groups? Where did that come from?

The philosophies of free will and determinism are nonsense. As is dialectical materialism, and Idealism.

Elaborate.

But, your philosophy (the notion that "individual" doesn't exist, we are all part of a larger collective, etc.) is essentially Idealism.
Which doesn't make sense, but apparently your crackpot theories disappeared long ago.

Elaborate.

If that were the case, then Fukuyama doesn't exist. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man) Which, is nonsense.

Elaborate.

No, things external to individuals "condition" individuals. The social interactions between individuals is what influences peoples beliefs and attitudes, which are further affected by larger social structural concerns (ruling class ideology, position in objective production relations, etc.).

Exactly - conditioning. You seem to be claiming there is an individual prior to the conditioning. Fair enough. If so try and describe that individual, please.

yawn* So much from the person who wants people to think outside the box, that he repeats the same tired bullshit used for centuries.

So you are saying this has all been said before. Fair enough. Tell me by whom and why that's a problem. Please critique the ideas. I would love to hear your views on the matter rather than your irate spittle.

Abstract concepts can't "clash". People clash with each other.

What are people then but the sum total of their conditionings? If you claim that people and individuals exist beyond their conditionings please describe how, I am intrigued.

Of course not. "Conditioning" is the noun for of "to condition".

Really? Who'd have thought...

So what's the problem? A conditioning is the end product of something being conditioned. If something has been conditioned it has a certain conditioning.

Again, you are further misusing language. "Being aware" has nothing to do with anything here

Why not?

According to your nonsense, this is an assumption because you have no direct experience with me.

It is an assumption, but did you experience an image of a polar bear in your mind?

Then stop wasting my fucking time telling me you know all these wonderful things about things you have no direct experience with

I am not wasting your time. How can you even 'waste time'? If anyone is 'wasting time' it is you. You have chosen to (mis)read and rant about this (or rather your conditioning has). It's your problem not mine.

Well, I'm using my computer to tell you how much of an ass you are.

Have you ever sincerely inquired into your own nature? I recommend you try, it can be quite revealing.

I can't make heads of tales of your garbage.

Perhaps that sentence should be restructured in the following way:

I can't make head or tail of it - so I will condemn it as garbage.

Typical attitude of the ignorant and the narrow-minded.

If we are truly honest your vituperativeness is evidently the result of some inner insecurity. If you were truly convinced that my posts are balderdash you wouldn't react in such an angry manner. Clearly it has hit some sore point.

But you're right.

So you haven't read it properly, I thought so. In that case all your posts are totally worthless.

First you said that "thinker is thought" and then "thinker = illusionary belief" an then "thinker is the result of illusionary belief". You don't even know what the flying fudge you are talking about.

Your obstinacy prevents you from understanding this very simple fact. I will, again, spell it out for you in children's English:

THINKER = THOUGHT = THERE IS NO SUCH AS A THINKER = THERE IS ONLY THOUGHT = THINKER IS AN ILLUSORY BELIEF

Not particularly complex...

But yet, it makes sense. Which is the least I can say for your asinine beliefs.

Great stuff.

Again, you don't seem to understand the very words you are using. If you look how the word "witness" is used in ordinary language (not this awful monolithic nonsense you've concocted for yourself), you would see that the entirety of the above is total nonsense. You don't "witness" thought.

How do you experience it then? How do you know it is thought?

Thought is something that happens by thinking.

Well done.

You think thoughts, not "witness them."

Wrong. As I have explained the process of thought is not willed. It reacts, automatically (by itself) to stimuli. There is no active thinking done by anyone because there is noone there, only experiencing.

You further seem to be conflating the result of an action (thinking) with the person doing the action (thinker).

Here we go again:

STIMULI = THOUGHT = ACTION

There is noone in this equation.

As for who you are, I don't know and I don't care. I know what I am and I am what I am, because I'm Pop-Eye the sailor man.

Well enjoy your spinach then.

I wonder what the Australians would think of that. Oh that's right. They don't exist either.

How can you be sure anything exists? All you can be sure of is your experience of the world, not that the world concretely exists. That is if you are truly objective.

[The Gallant Gallstone]

If philosophy is bullshit, why are the denizens of this thread engaging in it so enthusiastically?

[JazzRemington]

What a constructive post!

Neither is anything you've posted. It's all word play.


I am using the word in exactly the same way as the dictionary but with a slight modification, as I made clear.[/quote]

And what would that be? If you modify a definition in a dictionary, then you aren't using the word. If you have to concoct a special meaning of a word that is inconsistent with its normal use, then don't use the word.


I wasn't aware we were speaking. Frankly I don't know why I bothered writing all that as you clearly haven't addressed any of the points I made. Your only recourse so far has been to insult my posts.

I know ignorance when I see it. The man rambling on the street corner is ignored not because he's right, but because he's fucking nuts.


The individual person as a conditioned body-mind.

Actual uses of the word "individual" do not imply a "conditioned body-mind".


Who said we cannot speak of groups? Where did that come from?

If we cannot speak of individuals (as you've claimed) then we cannot speak of groups. Every other usage of the word "group" suggests collections of individual somethings (a group of individual nuts, a group of individual atoms, a group, or team, of individual baseball players). If individual people "don't exist", then neither does "the whole" or "the collective".


Elaborate.

I'm not derailing this thread. We're staying on the topic of your incoherent beliefs.


[B]But, your philosophy (the notion that "individual" doesn't exist, we are all part of a larger collective, etc.) is essentially Idealism.
Which doesn't make sense, but apparently your crackpot theories disappeared long ago.

Elaborate.

What's there to elaborate on? You seem to know what idealism is. You've said that "thought" is all that exists, which is a central belief in Idealism.


If that were the case, [B]then Fukuyama doesn't exist. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man) Which, is nonsense.

Elaborate.

Again, there is nothing to elaborate on. You said Idealism doesn't exist and yet Fukuyama, an Idealist, lives. But I bet you'll say he doesn't exist because you haven't "experienced him."


Exactly - conditioning. You seem to be claiming there is an individual prior to the conditioning. Fair enough. If so try and describe that individual, please.

If there isn't an individual prior to conditioning, then there is nothing to condition. Again, you seem to have this bizarre notion of "individual" that is completely divorced from any normal use of the term. There is no "my conception" or "your conception" of "individual".


So you are saying this has all been said before. Fair enough. Tell me by whom and why that's a problem. Please critique the ideas. I would love to hear your views on the matter rather than your irate spittle.

I'm not going to derail this thread. Stop trying.


What are people then but the sum total of their conditionings? If you claim that people and individuals exist beyond their conditionings please describe how, I am intrigued.

No, people are not the "sum total of their conditionings." "Conditionings" here is meaningless. No one says "conditionings". Again, the word "conditioning" can mean any number of things. It can't mean every possible meaning.


So what's the problem? A conditioning is the end product of something being conditioned. If something has been conditioned it has a certain conditioning.

"Conditioning" means something different depending upon its use. Not every use of "conditioning" refers to "modify behavior," which is what you seem to think.


Again, you are further misusing language. "Being aware" has nothing to do with anything here

Why not?

No, you have to show what "being aware" of conditioning (in any sense of the word) has anything to do with anything. Which you can't, because you're using the term in the abstract.


It is an assumption, but did you experience an image of a polar bear in your mind?

No, actually. But even if I did, you'd be guessing randomly. Words don't always have to produce mental images of anything.


I am not wasting your time. How can you even 'waste time'? If anyone is 'wasting time' it is you. You have chosen to (mis)read and rant about this (or rather your conditioning has). It's your problem not mine.

No, it is your problem because you've concocted an asinine theory that you can't defend without using word plays.


Have you ever sincerely inquired into your own nature? I recommend you try, it can be quite revealing.

Again, you're contradicting yourself. How can I "inquire into my own nature" if I don't exist?


Perhaps that sentence should be restructured in the following way:

I can't make head or tail of it - so I will condemn it as garbage.

Typical attitude of the ignorant and the narrow-minded.

You can't explain your crap without using word plays or falling back on some poorly understood usage of terms. If you were arguing with anyone else, they'd think you don't understand what you are talking about.


If we are truly honest your vituperativeness is evidently the result of some inner insecurity. If you were truly convinced that my posts are balderdash you wouldn't react in such an angry manner. Clearly it has hit some sore point.

I've made it a point to ridicule stupidity, because it's like a disease: it spreads easily.


But you're right.

So you haven't read it properly, I thought so. In that case all your posts are totally worthless.

Thank you for taking my statement out of context. :rolleyes:


THINKER = THOUGHT = THERE IS NO SUCH AS A THINKER = THERE IS ONLY THOUGHT = THINKER IS AN ILLUSORY BELIEF

But yet, you don't understand when I claim your "philosophy" is Idealist. :rolleyes:


How do you experience it then? How do you know it is thought?

You don't experience thoughts, you have them. Thinking is like speaking to one's self. If you don't know you're speaking to yourself, that's usually a sign of a serious mental disorder.


You think thoughts, not "witness them."

Wrong. As I have explained the process of thought is not willed. It reacts, automatically (by itself) to stimuli. There is no active thinking done by anyone because there is noone there, only experiencing.

Your confusing neural activity in general with thinking. "To will" is not the point, here.


STIMULI = THOUGHT = ACTION

There is noone in this equation.

Then who does the action? It would seem the stimuli does (if stimuli is thought, and thought is action, then that means stimuli is action). By that logic the desire (not the person who has the desire, but the desire itself) to cook food itself cooks food.


I wonder what the Australians would think of that. Oh that's right. They don't exist either.

How can you be sure anything exists? All you can be sure of is your experience of the world, not that the world concretely exists. That is if you are truly objective.

You seem to have a bizarre notion of "objective". If something can't exist before I experience it, that's not "objective." That's "subjective." Again, you don't seem to understand the very words you use.

[The New Consciousness]

Neither is anything you've posted. It's all word play.

Another insightful response from the master pedant.

And what would that be? If you modify a definition in a dictionary, then you aren't using the word.

You asked for my definition of thought. I gave you standard definition and then showed you how mine differed from that one. I explained it very carefully. Stop nitpicking and address the key ideas.

If you have to concoct a special meaning of a word that is inconsistent with its normal use, then don't use the word.

See above.

I know ignorance when I see it.

What an arrogant remark.

The man rambling on the street corner is ignored not because he's right, but because he's fucking nuts.

You are not ignoring me you are futilely nitpicking into minor details of language instead of addressing the key issues. All your ripostes so far have been totally devoid of any substance. You participation in this has been absolutely worthless.

Actual uses of the word "individual" do not imply a "conditioned body-mind".

THE individual, the person, the human being. Not an individual nut or an individual chicken or any other of the inane examples you keep listing.

If we cannot speak of individuals (as you've claimed) then we cannot speak of groups.

I never said 'we cannot speak of individuals' you just invented that. I said that the individual sense of self (i.e. John Smith with a set of memories and likes and dislikes, actively going around doing things and limited to a fleshy body, separate from the rest of the world) which is the central reference point of most humans' lives and the prism which distorts all their experiences, is not the true identity or location of the self. The self has no location as the self is awareness. When I say awareness I mean our experiencing nature which is always present and which illuminates and creates our present reality. Now John Smith is just a construct that is experienced in this awareness, just like a bird singing or the sensation of the wind on one's skin, only what has happened is that it has assumed gigantic proportions. Effectively, awareness has become lost in this mental construct, has set up camp there, falsely identifying itself totally with this thought-self subsequently believing itself in control (which it isn't), limited and in conflict with the rest of the world, which is the source of all human suffering and misery. I have destroyed this myth with two key observations which are very easy to make and totally irrefutable: nonduality (dualism is a ridiculous idea that has been totally vanquished) and nondoership (free will ditto).

Now I think it would be interesting if you could actually read this, think about it for a while and then come back with some real criticism, for discussions' sake instead of nitpicking all the time. So far you haven't responded to any of the general ideas.

I have a feeling you will just nitpick though.

If individual people "don't exist", then neither does "the whole" or "the collective".

The individual body-mind, separate from the rest of the world and exerting some discontinuous will, doesn't actually exist. That is totally evident. Nothing exists beyond cause and effect. There is no free will, there is just the universe in constant flux, in one totality. Thought is not separate from this. Thought, like anything else, is bound into this singular world of cause and effect. The illusion of the individual armed with an independent will emerges out of the thought-process but that doesn't make it real.

Also it is very clear in direct experience that you are not thought as thought is experienced just like anything else for that matter. This experiencing is not an individual, I use the term 'the real self' to refer to it but it has no such label. It is not a person. It simply is. It cannot be experienced because it is the very point of departure of experience. This is totally undeniable. It is what is illuminating this present moment and creating what we refer to as 'reality'. This is the actual basis of your experience of the world, not thought, which is but a part of the overall experience. Now my whole point (which with your constant obfuscation you have singularly failed to address) is that any philosophical inquiry need begin there at the true source of our existence, not in thought, which is but an aspect of the totality of our experience. In such an inquiry certain things would immediately become clear and we could actually approximate objectivity through the acceptance of our totally subjective aloneness.

You've said that "thought" is all that exists, which is a central belief in Idealism.

Either I haven't explained it properly or you have misread me but I certainly never said 'thought is all that exists'. I have said that there is no such thing as a thinker, because that is a concept included in the thought process, not separate and independent from thought (which such a thing would necessarily have to be).

If you want to pin a label on this 'philosophy' then it is nonduality, certainly not idealism.

You said Idealism doesn't exist and yet Fukuyama, an Idealist, lives.

I never said it doesn't exist but as an idea it has lost a lot of credence. You can't deny this: modern science is totally based on dialectical materialism and upward causation.

I bet you'll say he doesn't exist because you haven't "experienced him."

I cannot say he exists or doesn't exist. In my experience now how could I possibly say for sure what exists outside my spectrum of this when I can't even be totally sure this exists. This is logic. You cannot see this because you are not rigorous enough in your inquiries. Probably because you still, stubbornly believe you are a thinker, actively thinking thoughts, armed with free will and separate and isolated from the rest of the world. Evidence of which is quite obvious in your rude, aggressive responses, hallmark of a limited, pugilistic and totally conditioned mindset, not too different from a fundamentalist.

I'm not going to derail this thread. Stop trying.

I don't want to derail it I want you to actually write something meaningful instead of your pathetic nitpicking.

No, people are not the "sum total of their conditionings."

What are they then. You can't just state something like that without at least explaining why. I challenged you to define a 'person' or 'individual' beyond conditioning. You still haven't done it.

"Conditionings" here is meaningless. No one says "conditionings". Again, the word "conditioning" can mean any number of things. It can't mean every possible meaning.

And yet during all these dozens of posts in which I have made it abjectly clear what it means you still continue to nitpick about the meaning of the word instead of addressing the ideas I have presented you with. It's like you are arguing for arguments' sake.

No, you have to show what "being aware" of conditioning (in any sense of the word) has anything to do with anything. Which you can't, because you're using the term in the abstract.

You can be aware of your conditioning, you can come to the realisation that you have been conditioned that you are the product of your experiences. When you see this you are then free from this shackled existence, you step back from it.

No, actually

Come on be honest.

How can I "inquire into my own nature" if I don't exist?

You do exist, you exist as the awareness which brings your whole experience into observation. Thought is the guiding line of this experience, automatically reacting to stimuli to make sure you survive and perpetuate the species. In humans this has become grossly exaggerated beyond belief, hence suffering. Pleasure and pain are no longer sought in the simple basic necessities of existence but in all sorts of crazy abstractions, like perfectibility and amour propre. Between these twin poles of pleasure and pain you oscillate. However when this whole process is discovered then there is a possibility for freedom, beyond this chaotic, painful existence in the simple fact that we are not the thinker thinking thoughts but the awareness that brings all that into existence.

You can't explain your crap without using word plays or falling back on some poorly understood usage of terms. If you were arguing with anyone else, they'd think you don't understand what you are talking about.

On the contrary, most ofthe people I have discussed this with here on RevLeft have reacted in a far more constructive and insightful way than you have, what with your incessant pedantic nitpicking and inane, acrimonious remarks.

I've made it a point to ridicule stupidity, because it's like a disease: it spreads easily.

The real disease is the belief in the false self. Your aggravated posting is one of its many unpleasant symptoms. I'm not the one with the problems here. You're the ranter.

But yet, you don't understand when I claim your "philosophy" is Idealist.

How on earth could it be idealist when it is against free will?

You don't experience thoughts, you have them.

Experience/have = it's the same thing, no?

Thinking is like speaking to one's self.

Yes it's like a constant monologue in the head. My point is that the monologue is not being willed. How could it be willed? What would you will it to do? What would the quality of this mysterious thinker be? No, the simple fact is that it is an automatic streaming monologue which is determined by your material circumstances. There is noone there thinking it. There is only the experience of it.

If you think there is someone there thinking it then please, by all means, demonstrate how, in your infinite wisdom.

If you don't know you're speaking to yourself, that's usually a sign of a serious mental disorder.

Speaking to yourself - now we're getting somewhere. Who is this self that's being spoken to?

Your confusing neural activity in general with thinking. "To will" is not the point, here.

Address the point properly or at least elaborate your response. If you are arguing for a thinker then you need to provide evidence for such an entity. I challenge you to do so. In order to to that however you are going to have somehow prove that there is someone independent from the world of cause and effect.


Then who does the action?

That is the big question.

It would seem the stimuli does (if stimuli is thought, and thought is action, then that means stimuli is action).

Bingo.

By that logic the desire (not the person who has the desire, but the desire itself) to cook food itself cooks food.

Exactly! You've hit the nail on the head.

Why does there always need to be a person there? Is it not an assumption? Why can't it simply be the desire that does these things?

You seem to have a bizarre notion of "objective". If something can't exist before I experience it, that's not "objective." That's "subjective." Again, you don't seem to understand the very words you use.

There is no objectivity in your experience: it's totally subjective. It's objective to assume that there is some total, Newtonian reality 'out there', in which we're all floating around. The acceptance of the subjectivity of one's experience is ironically as objective as you can get.

-----------------------------

If philosophy is bullshit, why are the denizens of this thread engaging in it so enthusiastically?

Life is totally meaningless but you still live it, no?

[Lynx]

TNC, your definition of free will seems rather strict. If we're capable of making a choice, is that not sufficient to constitute free will?
Are you saying humans have no agency?

[JazzRemington]

You asked for my definition of thought. I gave you standard definition and then showed you how mine differed from that one. I explained it very carefully. Stop nitpicking and address the key ideas.

No, you don't get your own personal definition of "thought". "Thought" in ordinary language means something like "something spoken to one's self." It means nothing else. You are misunderstanding the word.


If you have to concoct a special meaning of a word that is inconsistent with its normal use, then don't use the word.

See above.

I say again, don't use a word you don't understand.


I know ignorance when I see it.

What an arrogant remark.

But yet claiming that I can't know anything without direct experience isn't arrogant. :rolleyes:


You are not ignoring me you are futilely nitpicking into minor details of language instead of addressing the key issues. All your ripostes so far have been totally devoid of any substance. You participation in this has been absolutely worthless.

Nothing you've said has had any substance either. It's just empty, meaningless, vague terms.


THE individual, the person, the human being. Not an individual nut or an individual chicken or any other of the inane examples you keep listing.

There IS no "the individual." "Individual" is used in many different ways. "Individual person" does not imply "mind-body anything".


I never said 'we cannot speak of individuals' you just invented that.


Now if we start our investigations from there certain facts become evident: there is no division, there are no individuals, there is just this - i.e. what we are experiencing.


I said that the individual sense of self (i.e. John Smith with a set of memories and likes and dislikes, actively going around doing things and limited to a fleshy body, separate from the rest of the world) which is the central reference point of most humans' lives and the prism which distorts all their experiences, is not the true identity or location of the self.

So, now it's identity? Make up your mind.


The self has no location as the self is awareness.

"The self" is meaningless. The word has no meaning in ordinary language. "Myself", "yourself", "his self" or "himself", "herself", "ourselves", etc. all refer to definite individual people, either the subject of the sentence or the object of some verb.


When I say awareness I mean our experiencing nature which is always present and which illuminates and creates our present reality.

No, "awareness" does not mean experiencing anything. "Awareness" is like a synonym of "having knowledge of something" or being informed or alert. Again, you misunderstand these words.


Now John Smith is just a construct that is experienced in this awareness, just like a bird singing or the sensation of the wind on one's skin, only what has happened is that it has assumed gigantic proportions.

No, "John Smith" is a name that is "applied" to a person. "John Smith" names someone. You are confusing names and the things being named.


Effectively, awareness has become lost in this mental construct, has set up camp there, falsely identifying itself totally with this thought-self subsequently believing itself in control (which it isn't), limited and in conflict with the rest of the world, which is the source of all human suffering and misery. I have destroyed this myth with two key observations which are very easy to make and totally irrefutable: nonduality (dualism is a ridiculous idea that has been totally vanquished) and nondoership (free will ditto).

:rolleyes:


Now I think it would be interesting if you could actually read this, think about it for a while and then come back with some real criticism, for discussions' sake instead of nitpicking all the time. So far you haven't responded to any of the general ideas.

Everything you've written and probably will write is only based on misusing words and misunderstanding how language functions. Words affect nothing but our own understanding of the situation.


The individual body-mind, separate from the rest of the world and exerting some discontinuous will, doesn't actually exist.

:rolleyes:


Nothing exists beyond cause and effect.

:lol:

Also it is very clear in direct experience that you are not thought as thought is experienced just like anything else for that matter. This experiencing is not an individual, I use the term 'the real self' to refer to it but it has no such label. It is not a person. It simply is. It cannot be experienced because it is the very point of departure of experience. This is totally undeniable. It is what is illuminating this present moment and creating what we refer to as 'reality'. This is the actual basis of your experience of the world, not thought, which is but a part of the overall experience. Now my whole point (which with your constant obfuscation you have singularly failed to address) is that any philosophical inquiry need begin there at the true source of our existence, not in thought, which is but an aspect of the totality of our experience. In such an inquiry certain things would immediately become clear and we could actually approximate objectivity through the acceptance of our totally subjective aloneness.

:closedeyes:


Either I haven't explained it properly or you have misread me but I certainly never said 'thought is all that exists'. I have said that there is no such thing as a thinker, because that is a concept included in the thought process, not separate and independent from thought (which such a thing would necessarily have to be).

Cool story, bro.

You said Idealism doesn't exist and yet Fukuyama, an Idealist, lives.


I never said it doesn't exist but as an idea it has lost a lot of credence.


If you are arguing for free will you are arguing for idealism, which has been vanquished now for nigh on 150 years.

"Vanquished" can mean a lot of things but apparently you seem to think it means "lost credence".


You can't deny this: modern science is totally based on dialectical materialism and upward causation.

Well, the scientists sure as hell don't know this. Try explaining this theory to them and see if they buy it.


I cannot say he exists or doesn't exist. In my experience now how could I possibly say for sure what exists outside my spectrum of this when I can't even be totally sure this exists. This is logic. You cannot see this because you are not rigorous enough in your inquiries. Probably because you still, stubbornly believe you are a thinker, actively thinking thoughts, armed with free will and separate and isolated from the rest of the world. Evidence of which is quite obvious in your rude, aggressive responses, hallmark of a limited, pugilistic and totally conditioned mindset, not too different from a fundamentalist.

SUPER cool story, bro.


I don't want to derail it I want you to actually write something meaningful instead of your pathetic nitpicking.

w00t @ u

No, people are not the "sum total of their conditionings."


What are they then. You can't just state something like that without at least explaining why. I challenged you to define a 'person' or 'individual' beyond conditioning. You still haven't done it.

*sigh* Is there any way, shape, or form that I can use the word "person" meaningfully that can't be construed to meaning "sum total of conditionings"?

"Conditionings" here is meaningless. No one says "conditionings". Again, the word "conditioning" can mean any number of things. It can't mean every possible meaning.


And yet during all these dozens of posts in which I have made it abjectly clear what it means you still continue to nitpick about the meaning of the word instead of addressing the ideas I have presented you with. It's like you are arguing for arguments' sake.

You don't get your own personal definition of words. Language use is a public affair, it's a product of people socializing and communicating with each other. The meanings of words are public and shared with people in particular cultures. An asocial person does not have a language while a person does not have a private language with words that mean what the person wants them to mean. When you try to use them in a public language, you get nonsense - no one understands you.


You can be aware of your conditioning, you can come to the realisation that you have been conditioned that you are the product of your experiences. When you see this you are then free from this shackled existence, you step back from it.

But yet free will doesn't exist, huh?


No, actually

Come on be honest.

I don't see how you'd know either way, you don't have direct experience with my vision.


You do exist, you exist as the awareness which brings your whole experience into observation. Thought is the guiding line of this experience, automatically reacting to stimuli to make sure you survive and perpetuate the species. In humans this has become grossly exaggerated beyond belief, hence suffering. Pleasure and pain are no longer sought in the simple basic necessities of existence but in all sorts of crazy abstractions, like perfectibility and amour propre. Between these twin poles of pleasure and pain you oscillate. However when this whole process is discovered then there is a possibility for freedom, beyond this chaotic, painful existence in the simple fact that we are not the thinker thinking thoughts but the awareness that brings all that into existence.

SUPER DUPER cool story, bro.


On the contrary, most ofthe people I have discussed this with here on RevLeft have reacted in a far more constructive and insightful way than you have, what with your incessant pedantic nitpicking and inane, acrimonious remarks.

That doesn't make it less of word play.


The real disease is the belief in the false self. Your aggravated posting is one of its many unpleasant symptoms. I'm not the one with the problems here. You're the ranter.

:rolleyes:


How on earth could it be idealist when it is against free will?

You tell me, you think people are the sum total of their conditionings, people are identities, etc.


Experience/have = it's the same thing, no?

No, you can have an experience but that's not the same thing as experiencing thought. "Thought" is not an experience or anything that you experience. You HAVE thoughts.


Yes it's like a constant monologue in the head. My point is that the monologue is not being willed. How could it be willed? What would you will it to do? What would the quality of this mysterious thinker be? No, the simple fact is that it is an automatic streaming monologue which is determined by your material circumstances. There is noone there thinking it. There is only the experience of it.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand more word play.


If you think there is someone there thinking it then please, by all means, demonstrate how, in your infinite wisdom.

People think.


Speaking to yourself - now we're getting somewhere. Who is this self that's being spoken to?

There is no "self". The word is meaningless. People speak to themselves all the time. If you aren't aware if it, that's usually a sign of a mental disorder. I don't know if you are aware of this (or whatever fucked over language your using) but mental disorders are not good things.


Address the point properly or at least elaborate your response. If you are arguing for a thinker then you need to provide evidence for such an entity. I challenge you to do so. In order to to that however you are going to have somehow prove that there is someone independent from the world of cause and effect.


It would seem the stimuli does (if stimuli is thought, and thought is action, then that means stimuli is action).

Bingo.

NO, stimuli are not things that are capable of action in the external world. Using the psychology definition of "stimuli," a "stimuli" is an abstract word denoting anything that causes something to happen with a person. It's more of a trigger. NO psychologist thinks stimuli "does action". Triggers don't cook eggs on the stove. People do that. Again, you are further misunderstanding language.


By that logic the desire (not the person who has the desire, but the desire itself) to cook food itself cooks food.

Exactly! You've hit the nail on the head.

That's absolutely the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard in my entire life. You claim to not be an Idealist, but you believe in this nonsense.


Why does there always need to be a person there? Is it not an assumption? Why can't it simply be the desire that does these things?

Because it's PEOPLE that do these things. Otherwise, you're just being a self-denying Idealist.


There is no objectivity in your experience: it's totally subjective.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan more word play.

-----------------------------


Life is totally meaningless but you still live it, no?

No, things have meaning IN life. "Life is totally meaningless" is a nonsense statement.

[The New Consciousness]

No, you don't get your own personal definition of "thought". "Thought" in ordinary language means something like "something spoken to one's self." It means nothing else. You are misunderstanding the word.

thought1


• noun 1 an idea or opinion produced by thinking or occurring suddenly in the mind. 2 the action or process of thinking. 3 (one’s thoughts) one’s mind or attention. 4 an act of considering or remembering. 5 careful consideration or attention: I haven’t given it much thought. 6 (thought of) an intention, hope, or idea of: they had no thought of surrender. 7 the formation of opinions, especially as a philosophy or system of ideas, or the opinions so formed.


There IS no "the individual." "Individual" is used in many different ways. "Individual person" does not imply "mind-body anything".

individual


• adjective 1 single; separate. 2 of or for one particular person. 3 striking or unusual; original.

noun 1 a single human being or item as distinct from a group. 2 a distinctive or original person.
— DERIVATIVES individualize (</B>also individualise) verb individually adverb.
— ORIGIN originally in the sense indivisible: from Latin in- ‘not’ + dividere ‘to divide’.

So, now it's identity? Make up your mind.

Of course. It is the identification with thought which creates the whole illusion of an independent individual in the first place.

"The self" is meaningless. The word has no meaning in ordinary language. "Myself", "yourself", "his self" or "himself", "herself", "ourselves", etc. all refer to definite individual people, either the subject of the sentence or the object of some verb.

the self-


/self-/ your consciousness of your own identity
a person considered as a unique individual; "one's own self"
(used as a combining form) relating to--of or by or to or from or for--the self; "self-knowledge"; "self-proclaimed"; "self-induced"
No, "awareness" does not mean experiencing anything. "Awareness" is like a synonym of "having knowledge of something" or being informed or alert. Again, you misunderstand these words.

awareness

The quality or state of being aware; consciousness.

No, "John Smith" is a name that is "applied" to a person. "John Smith" names someone. You are confusing names and the things being named.

Deary me you are slow. I used John Smith as an example of an individual. Not literally someone called John Smith!

But yet free will doesn't exist, huh?

Nope. Whether or not what I described happened is totally down to chance.

No, things have meaning IN life. "Life is totally meaningless" is a nonsense statement.

The subjective conditioning which artificially gives them meaning is itself totally meaningless!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

The Gallant Gallstone:


If philosophy is bullshit, why are the denizens of this thread engaging in it so enthusiastically?

Dah! Because some think it is, while others do not.

[The New Consciousness]

TNC, your definition of free will seems rather strict. If we're capable of making a choice, is that not sufficient to constitute free will?
Are you saying humans have no agency?

According to the Princeton dictionary, free will is the power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies.

These choices would have to be discontinuous, independent and somehow outside of the world of cause and effect. This is impossible. If you look at the nature of a choice it is quite evident that it is a predetermined affair and not free at all. A stimulus of some sort evokes an instantaneous, automatic response of thought, and this we call decision making.

For instance. You see a delicious chocolate cake in a shop window. Your immediate mental reaction is 'yummy!'. The desire is present. No-one actively chose to desire the cake it was totally automatic. Then two choices present themselves totally automatically: do I go inside and eat the cake or do I walk on by? The selection of one of these choices is also predetermined by how the decision ranks in the pleasure/pain 'hierarchy' if you will, i.e. what is considered to be best for 'me'. So if one is overweight the pull towards not eating the cake will be greater if one is in perfect shape. However if the desire is strong enough the desire will succeed. In effect the winning urge is the one that chooses not some invisible, assumed individual or thinker.

I am saying this whole process is totally automatic, it needs no-one to actively think it. This is because I maintain there is no such thing as a thinker, only thought. The whole idea of a thinker is totally absurd anyway. What would this thinker be? What characteristics would it have? Such a thing would have to be independent and discontinuous with respect to cause and effect, which logically is simply an impossibility. At the end of the day when one goes into it it becomes clear that there is no thinker, only thought.

[Hit The North]

For instance. You see a delicious chocolate cake in a shop window. Your immediate mental reaction is 'yummy!'. The desire is present. No-one actively chose to desire the cake it was totally automatic. Then two choices present themselves totally automatically: do I go inside and eat the cake or do I walk on by? The selection of one of these choices is also predetermined by how the decision ranks in the pleasure/pain 'hierarchy' if you will, i.e. what is considered to be best for 'me'. So if one is overweight the pull towards not eating the cake will be greater if one is in perfect shape. However if the desire is strong enough the desire will succeed. In effect the winning urge is the one that chooses not some invisible, assumed individual or thinker.



What if I don't have the money to buy the cake? What if, on going into the shop, I find that the cake I want has been reserved for someone else and that (let's say it was a chocolate cake) there are no chocolate cakes left and I have to choose between a Bakewell Tart and a Cinnamon Turnover? Will the choice be automatic? If so, tell me which one I'd choose. If there is no thinker and only the thought, then tell me what the thought would be, given that the identity of the thinker, according to you, is completely irrelevant (illusory, in fact).

But hold on, you've argued that my decision will be based on how I feel about my self - fit or fat. Therefore you are allowing for subjective feelings to determine the choice I make. How can it therefore be an automatic process which is detached from the individual concerned?


I am saying this whole process is totally automatic, it needs no-one to actively think it. So you're claiming, for instance, that your post above was automatically written and you put no thought into it at all? That I can believe!


The whole idea of a thinker is totally absurd anyway. What would this thinker be? What characteristics would it have? have you been outside lately? You should try it. Get on a bus and you'll find yourself surrounded by such agents. You will find, through the employment of empathetic understanding, that you do not live in a society of marionettes after all.


Such a thing would have to be independent and discontinuous with respect to cause and effect, which logically is simply an impossibility. As has been explained to you, one does not have to adopt such an extreme position in order to account for conscious, decision-making agents. In fact, any agent which did exist independently of the material world would be unable to think, as they would have no interaction with the world around them and, therefore, nothing to think about.


At the end of the day when one goes into it it becomes clear that there is no thinker, only thought.The notion of thought which exists independently of active thinkers is the real absurdity and you are still to tell us where you believe thoughts originate if they do not originate in the brains of individual agents.

[The New Consciousness]

Dear Bob,

Thanks for joining in! It's so refreshing to have someone participate who actually addresses the ideas instead of nitpicking over irrelevant details!

What if I don't have the money to buy the cake? What if, on going into the shop, I find that the cake I want has been reserved for someone else and that (let's say it was a chocolate cake) there are no chocolate cakes left and I have to choose between a Bakewell Tart and a Cinnamon Turnover? Will the choice be automatic?

Yes.

If so, tell me which one I'd choose.

I have no clue. It would depend entirely on which one appealed to you the most. How can that be chosen? It's not as if you strategise what will appeal to you. The appeal arises on it's own, triggering, most probably, a great deal of salivation! If that urge to devour the Bakewell or the Cinnamon Turnver is immensely strong then you will devour it, or should I say, the urge will devour it. If a contrary impulse concerned with weight-gain is stronger then that impulse or warning will reject it.

If there is no thinker and only the thought, then tell me what the thought would be, given that the identity of the thinker, according to you, is completely irrelevant (illusory, in fact).

The thought appears generally as an image or perhaps a phrase. The image may be you eating the cake in 5 minutes time and a subsequent sensation of tasty anticipation. Or the image may be you in a few weeks weighing yourself and beholding a horrific weight gain. The conditioning selects the image it feels is most pertinent. If there were an independent thinker it would be unconditioned. If there were no conditioning at play the images would have no effect. Nothing would happen.

This degree of freedom from desires and urges is ironically not possible while belief in the thinker is present. The belief that these urges and desires are willed gives them immense importance and credence. When we become aware that this process of thought is not the fruit of our will then we can just observe the image or phrase-making of thought and achieve a degree of independence from it. I maintain that we are not thinkers and doers but observers of the process of thinking and doing which is the natural result of our conditioning, not of an independent entity discontinuously exerting some kind of idealist, god-like will.

But hold on, you've argued that my decision will be based on how I feel about my self - fit or fat. Therefore you are allowing for subjective feelings to determine the choice I make. How can it therefore be an automatic process which is detached from the individual concerned?

The individual is this automatic process. This process of thought, of image making, of reactive thinking, totally automatic, conditioned, subjective, includes all notions of identity, self, feelings about self, choices, decisions et cetera. There is no individual that exists beyond this process, independently manipulating it. This is what I'm trying to get at. There is only this observing, impersonal presence we call consciousness, which is not an individual. The individual arises as a concept in thought which is experienced by consciousness.

Now if we are going to go searching for ourselves I am saying we can find it in consciousness rather than thought which is but a limited object experienced by consciousness, rather like any other limited thing, like a sound or a flashing light or whatever.

you're claiming, for instance, that your post above was automatically written and you put no thought into it at all? That I can believe!

The real question here is who thought about it. You assume there is this fixed central person here doing things with an independent will. Is it so hard to conceive that the ideas expressed are expressed only by another idea, the idea of 'me' or a 'person', itself totally a construct of thought? That thought begat thought?

have you been outside lately? You should try it. Get on a bus and you'll find yourself surrounded by such agents. You will find, through the employment of empathetic understanding, that you do not live in a society of marionettes after all.

I cannot know what other people think. I can't even be sure other people exist. All I can go on is my own totally subjective perception of them. I can assume that they, like me, share certain qualities so on. Using this assumption I can communicate and empathise with them. But this is all based on a shaky premise, an assumption. If I am going to be truly truthful and objective about things I have no idea what's going in their heads. I can only transpose my own experience over to them. All my posts in this thread for instance have been written, knowingly, on the assumption that other people experience things the way I do. I can never know that for sure though can I?

I have come to realise through simple logical thinking and my own direct experience of life that there is no thinker here, only a persistent illusion of a thinker that when scrutinised just doesn't exist. It is a suggestion, a concept, an assumption included within the mechanism of thought. Thought dresses itself up as an individual agent of free will. It divides itself up into thinker in thought. But the whole thing is just thought.

As has been explained to you, one does not have to adopt such an extreme position in order to account for conscious, decision-making agents.

You necessarily must if you are to argue for free will and an independent god-like thinker.

In fact, any agent which did exist independently of the material world would be unable to think, as they would have no interaction with the world around them and, therefore, nothing to think about.

Quite. So you see the thinker cannot exist. There is only thought. So let's drop this foolish notion.

The notion of thought which exists independently of active thinkers is the real absurdity

I'm not saying thought exists independently of active thinkers. I am saying there are no active thinkers, just thought.

and you are still to tell us where you believe thoughts originate if they do not originate in the brains of individual agents.

Synapses in the brain create thoughts. Where is the individual agent there? All I see is a brain with some synapses firing.

[Hit The North]

You necessarily must if you are to argue for free will and an independent god-like thinker.That's the point: No one is claiming such a thing.


Synapses in the brain create thoughts. Where is the individual agent there? All I see is a brain with some synapses firing.

Well, you need to posit the existence of individual brains in order to recognize the existence of synapses. And this is not a predetermined process. As you yourself agree, the experiences and subjective feelings of agents will determine their decisions. Therefore it is absurd to deny the role of active thinkers. Otherwise, where are those experiences and feelings anchored?

[The New Consciousness]

That's the point: No one is claiming such a thing.

Ok well then we're all on the same page then. :P

Well, you need to posit the existence of individual brains in order to recognize the existence of synapses.

It's unnecessary to speak of synapses and such abstract stuff anyway. In direct experience nondoership is evident.

As you yourself agree, the experiences and subjective feelings of agents will determine their decisions.

Then how are they agents?

Therefore it is absurd to deny the role of active thinkers.

But if its totally determined then they aren't active thinkers are they?

Otherwise, where are those experiences and feelings anchored?

They are experienced by consciousness, just like everything else.

[JazzRemington]

"thought1


• noun 1 an idea or opinion produced by thinking or occurring suddenly in the mind. 2 the action or process of thinking. 3 (one’s thoughts) one’s mind or attention. 4 an act of considering or remembering. 5 careful consideration or attention: I haven’t given it much thought. 6 (thought of) an intention, hope, or idea of: they had no thought of surrender. 7 the formation of opinions, especially as a philosophy or system of ideas, or the opinions so formed."

"individual


• adjective 1 single; separate. 2 of or for one particular person. 3 striking or unusual; original.

noun 1 a single human being or item as distinct from a group. 2 a distinctive or original person.
— DERIVATIVES individualize (</B>also individualise) verb individually adverb.
— ORIGIN originally in the sense indivisible: from Latin in- ‘not’ + dividere ‘to divide’."

the self-


/self-/ your consciousness of your own identity
a person considered as a unique individual; "one's own self"
(used as a combining form) relating to--of or by or to or from or for--the self; "self-knowledge"; "self-proclaimed"; "self-induced"
No, "awareness" does not mean experiencing anything. "Awareness" is like a synonym of "having knowledge of something" or being informed or alert. Again, you misunderstand these words.

awareness

The quality or state of being aware; consciousness.

I can only assume this was a (failed) attempt at something, but I don't know what. Remember that words don't give meaning to words. Their use does. The words in the dictionary definition assume one knows how to use them. When laypeople use the word "thought" it DOES mean "an idea or opinion produced by thinking", but "thinking" here is something like "speaking to one's self" when it is used in ordinary language. I suppose this could be something internal or external ("He's thinking out loud again" makes sense). These aren't anything but words being spoken, not objects with any particular power, supernatural or otherwise.

The word "the individual", in distinction from ANY use, is a nonsense term; without knowing how it is used it could mean anything or nothing. The definitions "potential uses" of the word "individual." But, when it is used it is usually referring to something from a group (race, species, organizations, collection, etc.). We use the word to either make a distinction from some group, discuss "component" parts of some group to make comparisons and/or contrasts, list members of some organization, etc. In other words, something is an individual of something.

The "self" suffers the same problem. It usually is used as a reflexive pronoun referring to a particular pronoun (herself, himself, itself, etc.). Like, "I hurt myself playing football", "He is going to get himself killed," It broke all by itself." Other times it be used as a metaphor: "Peter had a lot of self-knowledge" means something like "Peter knew a lot about himself" (in the sense of knowing his strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, how he gets along in particular situations, etc.). "The machine is self-cleaning" means something like "The machine cleans itself". The psychological meaning of "self" is also a metaphor for soemthing like analytical constructs to study personality and behavior. Metaphors are not supposed to be taken literally, and only presents the same problems you've gotten yourself into.

The definition of "awareness" is a tautology. The listing says awareness is "the quality or state of being aware" which means to have awareness means to be aware. This doesn't help us much. The word "consciousness" doesn't either, because that also means "awareness" sometimes.

None of this means, however, that whatever you are referring to doesn't exist. I'm only talking about what does and does not make literal sense. Words don't have magical power over anything nor any ability to change anything. There is no ultimate definition for every word, or some hidden meaning that is different from it's meaning when used in a public language shared by people. The only thing they affect are an individual person's understanding. This is like asking "who wrote the laws of nature" and eventually arriving at the concept of some all powerful deity that can create laws that everything must follow or else suffer His/Her/Its wrath, much like traffic or tax laws. Some things are created through misunderstanding. Upon inspection, we clear up these misunderstandings.

But all of this does mean that you are trying to dodge the issue at hand. You are only giving me definitions of words. I didn't ask for definitions. I know what the dictionary says about what a word's defintion is. I asked what you meant. You haven't been able to tell me clearly becuase you are trying to use these words to discuss some vague, abstract concept that probably is a product of your misunderstanding.


Of course. It is the identification with thought which creates the whole illusion of an independent individual in the first place.Well, as I've said above: that's not the case. It only depends on what you mean when you use these words.


Deary me you are slow. I used John Smith as an example of an individual. Not literally someone called John Smith!My statement still stands. There is a difference between the name and the the thing being named. When someone named "John Smith" dies, the word "John Smith" still still meaning when used, even if he is the last person to live with the name.


Nope. Whether or not what I described happened is totally down to chance.Then your entire idea is ridiculous. You claim that everything is "determined" by everything and say that "free will doesn't exist". You then essentially claim that one must or should make a choice in becoming "aware of one's conditionings." If everything is "determined," then one cannot make a choice. Regardless of whether or not these are "pre-determined choices" that are presented to "the individual," what he chooses suggests "free will exists" to some degree, assuming by "free will" you mean something like the ability to make choices to whatever degree. It appears you are conflating scientific laws with, say, secular or religious laws.


The subjective conditioning which artificially gives them meaning is itself totally meaningless!Now your just playing with words, again. And I repeat my statement earlier that your entire philosophy sucks.

[Hit The North]

As you yourself agree, the experiences and subjective feelings of agents will determine their decisions.

Then how are they agents?

How are they not agents? The experiences and feelings are theirs and inform their decision-making process and the way they act.

If, for instance, there is a strike at a workplace and some of the workers decide not to go on strike but instead to cross the picket line, are you claiming that this decision is made without any reflection on the part of the agents, that they are, in fact, automatically, or predetermined scabs?


But if its totally determined then they aren't active thinkers are they?

Who is claiming that human decision-making or action is "totally determined"? There are certainly determinations at work, but individuals are capable of acting against their own self-interests or against the perceived norms and values of their social upbringing.

[The New Consciousness]

I can only assume this was a (failed) attempt at something, but I don't know what.

I was trying for the umpteenth time to give you a definition of the words I was using. Now if Oxford isn't good enough what is? We may as well be two parrots chattering at one another.

Remember that words don't give meaning to words. Their use does. The words in the dictionary definition assume one knows how to use them. When laypeople use the word "thought" it DOES mean "an idea or opinion produced by thinking", but "thinking" here is something like "speaking to one's self" when it is used in ordinary language. I suppose this could be something internal or external ("He's thinking out loud again" makes sense). These aren't anything but words being spoken, not objects with any particular power, supernatural or otherwise.

Of course they are just words and on their own they have no inherent truth or meaning. They are just artificial labels we have stuck onto the the things we experience in the world. But they point to concrete things. When I say 'self' this is pointing to the heart of your experience, the very foundation of your being, the centre of your life, your 'me-ness'! I think this is fairly evident no?

The word "the individual", in distinction from ANY use, is a nonsense term; without knowing how it is used it could mean anything or nothing. The definitions "potential uses" of the word "individual." But, when it is used it is usually referring to something from a group (race, species, organizations, collection, etc.). We use the word to either make a distinction from some group, discuss "component" parts of some group to make comparisons and/or contrasts, list members of some organization, etc. In other words, something is an individual of something.

Yes but if you had actually read my posts instead of preparing your diatribes you would have realised that the way I have been using 'the individual' is as a distinctive or original person.

Eg - I am x (name), with a history, separate from the rest of the world, going around thinking and doing things and forming relationships with other distinctive and original people.

What I have been trying to show you is that in truth I am the consciousness, awareness, presence, experiencing thing or whatever that illuminates this distinctive or original person.

The "self" suffers the same problem. It usually is used as a reflexive pronoun referring to a particular pronoun (herself, himself, itself, etc.). Like, "I hurt myself playing football", "He is going to get himself killed," It broke all by itself." Other times it be used as a metaphor: "Peter had a lot of self-knowledge" means something like "Peter knew a lot about himself" (in the sense of knowing his strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, how he gets along in particular situations, etc.). "The machine is self-cleaning" means something like "The machine cleans itself". The psychological meaning of "self" is also a metaphor for soemthing like analytical constructs to study personality and behavior. Metaphors are not supposed to be taken literally, and only presents the same problems you've gotten yourself into.

Would you prefer it if I say 'me' or 'I', instead?

The definition of "awareness" is a tautology. The listing says awareness is "the quality or state of being aware" which means to have awareness means to be aware. This doesn't help us much.

Why not? What are you now but awareness? What other word could you use for what is going on right now in your own personal experience? Awareness, witnessing, consciousness, observing...aren't these adequate words?

None of this means, however, that whatever you are referring to doesn't exist. I'm only talking about what does and does not make literal sense. Words don't have magical power over anything nor any ability to change anything. There is no ultimate definition for every word, or some hidden meaning that is different from it's meaning when used in a public language shared by people. The only thing they affect are an individual person's understanding. This is like asking "who wrote the laws of nature" and eventually arriving at the concept of some all powerful deity that can create laws that everything must follow or else suffer His/Her/Its wrath, much like traffic or tax laws. Some things are created through misunderstanding. Upon inspection, we clear up these misunderstandings.

Obviously, language is limited but the terms I have been using aren't so ambiguous are they? I think it's a bit far-fetched to say they are. I am simply using these terms to refer to different aspects of human experience.

But all of this does mean that you are trying to dodge the issue at hand. You are only giving me definitions of words. I didn't ask for definitions. I know what the dictionary says about what a word's defintion is. I asked what you meant. You haven't been able to tell me clearly becuase you are trying to use these words to discuss some vague, abstract concept that probably is a product of your misunderstanding.

Well every time I try to tell you what I mean you come back with 'do you always break into monologues' or 'yawn' or some sardonic smilie. What am I supposed to do? I can do it again but I don't see the point if your response is just going to be another wasteful riposte.

Well, as I've said above: that's not the case. It only depends on what you mean when you use these words.

'the identification with thought which creates the whole illusion of an independent individual in the first place'

I maintain that if we are going to talk about the 'I' or 'me' or sense of self at the core of our experience, it is awareness, or consciousness, or this simply witnessing of what is. Thought is witnessed just like anything else. If you couldn't witness thought then you wouldn't know it was thought! You would be thought. So we arrive at the conclusion that we are not thought but the witness of thought. Thought contains all these notions of the individual.

Now identification is when this awareness, witnessing, or consciousness, believes itself to be something, it identifies with an object. Most commonly it identifies with thought and all the notions of individual. It is a mistaken identity.

We can become aware of this identity problem. In this case awareness becomes self-aware (what I call the aware consciousness). Then there is a degree of freedom that was not possible before.

Then your entire idea is ridiculous. You claim that everything is "determined" by everything and say that "free will doesn't exist". You then essentially claim that one must or should make a choice in becoming "aware of one's conditionings."

Yes but that's not a choice. That is determined too. In my case certain circumstances made me very introspective. In that introspection I saw that there was an identification problem going on which was then, upon exposure, solved. Since then I have had a much more peaceful life and I have made some very interesting discoveries. I have only been trying to share them here.

If everything is "determined," then one cannot make a choice.

Correct. I didn't choose to experience this change. It happened.

Regardless of whether or not these are "pre-determined choices" that are presented to "the individual," what he chooses suggests "free will exists" to some degree, assuming by "free will" you mean something like the ability to make choices to whatever degree. It appears you are conflating scientific laws with, say, secular or religious laws.

When one 'chooses' is there really an individual choosing or is it just that the dispositions, the likes and dislikes, the urges and desires which are all the legacy of conditioning and prior events choose?

Now your just playing with words, again. And I repeat my statement earlier that your entire philosophy sucks.

Yes but you still haven't explained why.

-------------------------------------------------

How are they not agents? The experiences and feelings are theirs

Are they theirs or are they just witnessed by them?

If, for instance, there is a strike at a workplace and some of the workers decide not to go on strike but instead to cross the picket line, are you claiming that this decision is made without any reflection on the part of the agents, that they are, in fact, automatically, or predetermined scabs?

Yes they are predetermined scabs, predetermined by the powerful mental urges which make the decision to cross the picket line.

Who is claiming that human decision-making or action is "totally determined"? There are certainly determinations at work, but individuals are capable of acting against their own self-interests or against the perceived norms and values of their social upbringing.

Everything that the individual (i.e. thought) does is bound into the pleasure/pain survival nexus, the maxim 'what is best for me'. This existence is just a perpetual fleeing from perceived pain to perceived pleasure. The perception and the objects perceives is determined by what seemed to work before which is assimilated into the conditioning as kind of trial and error process.

Look at the things 'you' do. Are they done by 'you' or are they not just the product of this gestalt 'what is best for me'. You have chosen to respond to my post. Why? Go into it.

[JazzRemington]

I was trying for the umpteenth time to give you a definition of the words I was using. Now if Oxford isn't good enough what is? We may as well be two parrots chattering at one another.

...

Obviously, language is limited but the terms I have been using aren't so ambiguous are they? I think it's a bit far-fetched to say they are. I am simply using these terms to refer to different aspects of human experience.

...

Of course they are just words and on their own they have no inherent truth or meaning. They are just artificial labels we have stuck onto the the things we experience in the world. But they point to concrete things.

Again, words don't give meaning to words. It's usage that does, and when you use these words in the way you do, you produce nonsense. Words aren't "fingers," they don't "point to concrete things." They just have meaning when used. If what you say is the case, then to what "concrete thing" does "or" "point"? Also, you DO seem to think that words have inherent truth because you think any usage of "self" implies something mystical or magical like "awareness" or whatever.


Yes but if you had actually read my posts instead of preparing your diatribes you would have realised that the way I have been using 'the individual' is as a distinctive or original person.

After you kept saying that "the individual" doesn't exist. But, every use of "individual" does not imply being distinct (assuming you mean "different" here) or original. It means something like "one of something" or "one of a group." When it's being used as a metaphor, yes (as in "He is quite the individual"), but it has to make literal sense for it to count. Besides, metaphors aren't supposed to be taken literally, anyway.


Eg - I am x (name), with a history, separate from the rest of the world, going around thinking and doing things and forming relationships with other distinctive and original people.

Sure, and I am Superman.


What I have been trying to show you is that in truth I am the consciousness, awareness, presence, experiencing thing or whatever that illuminates this distinctive or original person.

No, people "aren't consciousness." "Consciousness" is a condition meaning something like "being aware" or "being aware of something;" you are conscious of something or you are conscious (in the medical sense), not "consciousness." "Consciousness" is a noun, not an adjective, which is what you want to use it as. People say "he has consciousness" (in the medical sense), but nevr something like "I have consiousness."


Would you prefer it if I say 'me' or 'I', instead?

You'd only be talking about yourself, then.


Why not? What are you now but awareness? What other word could you use for what is going on right now in your own personal experience? Awareness, witnessing, consciousness, observing...aren't these adequate words?

A tautology is worthless and doesns't describe anything. I could use words like "typing on a computer" or "sitting on my bed" to describe my personal experienc right now. Those other words only make sense in SPECIFIC contexts, not in abstract. You keep wanting to use these words in abstract from any particular use. This is your problem and why you believe in these nonsensical ideas.


Well every time I try to tell you what I mean you come back with 'do you always break into monologues' or 'yawn' or some sardonic smilie. What am I supposed to do? I can do it again but I don't see the point if your response is just going to be another wasteful riposte.

Because your philosophy is fucking stupid and relies on confused language.


'the identification with thought which creates the whole illusion of an independent individual in the first place'

Which is a nonsense statement.


I maintain that if we are going to talk about the 'I' or 'me' or sense of self at the core of our experience, it is awareness, or consciousness, or this simply witnessing of what is. Thought is witnessed just like anything else. If you couldn't witness thought then you wouldn't know it was thought! You would be thought. So we arrive at the conclusion that we are not thought but the witness of thought. Thought contains all these notions of the individual.

No, once again you do not "witness" thought. You have thoughts. Thoughts are things that are SPOKEN to one's self. Your insistance on using polar bears to show how people can "witness thought" demonstrates a misunderstanding of what "thought" means. When you say that you "witness" thought and use a polar bear as an example, you are conflating visualization with thought.


Now identification is when this awareness, witnessing, or consciousness, believes itself to be something, it identifies with an object. Most commonly it identifies with thought and all the notions of individual. It is a mistaken identity.

...

We can become aware of this identity problem. In this case awareness becomes self-aware (what I call the aware consciousness). Then there is a degree of freedom that was not possible before.

No, none of these can "do" anything (much less "believe (themselves) to be something"). They are actions and conditions that people do or are in particular times. "Awareness" can't be "self-aware." People are "self-aware" when, for instance, they get nervous before a big play and begin to worry about how they look or will act. Again, "self-aware" makes sense in particular uses.


Yes but that's not a choice. That is determined too. In my case certain circumstances made me very introspective. In that introspection I saw that there was an identification problem going on which was then, upon exposure, solved. Since then I have had a much more peaceful life and I have made some very interesting discoveries. I have only been trying to share them here.

...

Correct. I didn't choose to experience this change. It happened.

...

When one 'chooses' is there really an individual choosing or is it just that the dispositions, the likes and dislikes, the urges and desires which are all the legacy of conditioning and prior events choose?

"Determined" doesn't make sense when you use it. People determine things. Saying everything is "deteremined" relies on believing that nature is anthropomorphic, which it is not. This is just another instance in the long series of nonsense you've been spewing due to your failure to understand language.


Yes but you still haven't explained why.

Because it's just a bunch of meaningless wordplays and failed attempts at using ambiguous language.

[The New Consciousness]

I fear, JazzRemington, that I will never be able to communicate these ideas to you.

Oh well.

Life goes on.

[Hit The North]

How are they not agents? The experiences and feelings are theirs

Are they theirs or are they just witnessed by them? I'm not clear what you mean. But picking up on Jazz's approach, interpreted either way, your statement is nonsense.

If you mean the experiences and feelings witness the individuals or that the individuals witness the experiences and feelings, you would have to be using the words 'experiences' and 'feelings' in a completely new way. It makes no sense to talk about 'experiences' without positing an agent to do the experiencing or 'feelings' without positing an agent to do the feeling. In other words, both experience and feeling is what people do - they can't exist outside of that.


You have chosen to respond to my post. Why? Go into it.
Easy. Because your confusion amuses me. But also, your confusion arises out of seeing the world in a peculiarly binary and abstract manner and the better part of me wants to fix you.

[The New Consciousness]

I'm not clear what you mean. But picking up on Jazz's approach, interpreted either way, your statement is nonsense.

Nonsense because you can't understand it. Isn't that what religious fundamentalists say about science and technology?

If you mean the experiences and feelings witness the individuals or that the individuals witness the experiences and feelings, you would have to be using the words 'experiences' and 'feelings' in a completely new way.

No. The impersonal awareness that experiences everything witnesses them.

It makes no sense to talk about 'experiences' without positing an agent to do the experiencing or 'feelings' without positing an agent to do the feeling. In other words, both experience and feeling is what people do - they can't exist outside of that.

I am saying that the whole construct of the individual person or agent is experienced. Now if you are experiencing the person or agent, how can you be the person or agent? I see an orange but that doesn't make me an orange. Is not the person or agent, as you call it, just an element, like the orange, of what you are experiencing? It is not the subject but the object. It's just foolproof logic. If you can't see that then you're a lost cause.

Easy. Because your confusion amuses me.

Such arrogance, as if you know everything! That's amusing.

The real reason why you and in particular JazzRemington have been picking away superficially at my posts (again and again and again) is not in an amusing, playful way (as evidenced by the latter's repeated use of foul and angry language). On the contrary, it's because you don't understand what I'm talking about. You most probably feel threatened or challenged in some way and so resort to insulting and other childish methods of criticism. Instead of just asking questions you launch attacks. If you were so certain I was wrong, if my ideas were so lamentably weak, you would not react in such a childish, offended way. That much is fact.

But also, your confusion arises out of seeing the world in a peculiarly binary and abstract manner and the better part of me wants to fix you.

Well thank you for your kindness, but there is no confusion here. This is cristal clear. In fact, you will see that there is no variation in what I have written. The ideas have been the same throughout, unshakably so. There is no wavering here.

The funny thing is your responses have totally confirmed all that I have said. Aggression and superciliousness are inevitable when a limited, conditioned mind encounters something new and unexpected. Is that not the story of mankind?

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Well, let's see an example.

You still seem to want to cling onto it as a sort of super-science.

Well, this looks like it belongs in science. The rest perhaps we can leave to novellists and psychologists. I fail to see what philosophy has to offer (over and above the things I listed earlier).

Well, the first examples that come to mind aren't positive arguments. Rather, they strongly criticize alternative ideas. Putnam's critique of logical behaviorism would be in this vein. Hume's writing on induction and causation are rather compelling.

When it comes to positive arguments, it depends on what qualifies. I think a utilitarian response to the "will you lie to save a life" scenarios is preferable to Kant's responses to those situations. Atheism is preferable to theism, but this is a negative thesis, perhaps.

I'm particularly interested in ethics. I think diverting the train to kill person is better when considering the Trolley Problem. Materialism is better than idealism from a metaphysical standpoint. Egoism has been largely refuted, but I'd probably credit science with most of the work.

Theories on personal identity as described by Parfit (memory-based views) are better than the brain-based views. Consequentialism is better than alternative ethical frameworks. Truths are possible at least in a contextual sense.

A lot of these are opinion, obviously. However, some of them are widespread views rather than my personal opinion (not that that determines truth, though some believe it does). And truth doesn't require agreement, as I see it. Science just has the benefit of producing argument amongst those who employ its methodologies. Plenty of crazies still reject well established theories.


Basically, using evidence to support a philosophical theory always suffers from something like confirmation bias - no matter what, they're always right.

What sort of problems are we talking about? "The meaning of life" is not a genuine problem, nor is "why are we here" or "what is truth", etc.

But if you are talking about questions like "what is the right thing to do, here", philosophy can't help - that's an ethical problem. Simply asking "what the right thing to do" is suggests you already have a concept of right in an ethical sense. How would you have been able to use the word meaningfully if you didn't know what it meant?

The "meaning of life" and "what is truth" are genuine questions - not necessarily problems. You have simply adopted a framework that resolves them by designating them meaningless. I'm not sure how a universalized argument that these are not "genuine problems" would work. Language explains away "If a tree falls it the forest, does it make a sound." If you define "meaning" and "life" in a traditional sense, you get nothing since meaning applies to sentient things, supposedly. This is essentially leading towards an existential solution where it is "what is the meaning of my life." I don't see how an overlying theory can dismiss these as meaningless.

For instance, the critique that philosophy doesn't solve problems is contentious but supportable. Ultimately, it's based on induction and pragmatics. It doesn't prove philosophy can't solve problems. Philosophy believes it can for who knows what reasons. I presume language-theories are supposed to dismiss philosophical methodology. However, I don't see how that is particularly significant.

Science does use specific concepts in ways that make them operationalized for experimentation and such. Utilitarianism, arguably, operationalizes a philosophical concept.

I find science interesting, but I just don't like the whole idea of science as having a monopoly on truth. As long as I accept that something is "scientifically true," I should still be able to believe it's false at a higher level. I like to avoid allowing systems to dictate my beliefs even when they create beliefs that aren't advantageous. I'd argue that much of science gives you reason to be completely pessimistic about the future and the capability of humanity. However, a combination of science and ethics works in unique ways.

I just want to be able to control my state of mind as much as possible. I want to believe I am watching a film where real people die then stop when it finishes. If someone tells me it's false, I want to be able to honestly disagree with them.

Science limits the effectiveness of the imagination in legitimizing alternative realities. If I read a book, I want the characters to be real. Not metaphorically. Literally.

[Hit The North]

TNC:
No. The impersonal awareness that experiences everything witnesses them. The impersonal awareness? You've just made that up!


I am saying that the whole construct of the individual person or agent is experienced. let's for a moment pretend I know what that statement actually means, "the whole construct of the individual person is experienced" by whom?


Now if you are experiencing the person or agent, how can you be the person or agent? I see an orange but that doesn't make me an orange.
Again, who is doing the experiencing here? I claimed that only persons can experience or feel anything. You seem to think that something else is doing this for them. It's a very schizoid point of view.


If you can't see that then you're a lost cause. I'm lost to your cause, baby. What is your cause anyway? Why are you loitering on a revolutionary leftist forum when you don't appear to share our aims or politics?


On the contrary, it's because you don't understand what I'm talking about. Then you should strive to make yourself understood. Writing like you are the Wizard of Oz is not helping.

[JazzRemington]

The "meaning of life" and "what is truth" are genuine questions - not necessarily problems.

Things have meaning IN life, so the real question would be something like "what is the meaning in life of life," which is a recursive question and thus nonsense. Unless you are talking about, say, what a biologist means by "life," which IS a genuine question (and one that has NO philosophical implications, what so ever). If you refuse to accept that, then that means you'd have to look at how "meaning" and "life" are used in ordinary language. Either way, the question is meaningless.


You have simply adopted a framework that resolves them by designating them meaningless. I'm not sure how a universalized argument that these are not "genuine problems" would work. Language explains away "If a tree falls it the forest, does it make a sound." If you define "meaning" and "life" in a traditional sense, you get nothing since meaning applies to sentient things, supposedly. This is essentially leading towards an existential solution where it is "what is the meaning of my life." I don't see how an overlying theory can dismiss these as meaningless.

Trying to use a word in abstract from any particular use automatically renders it meaningless. Words get their meaning through use in specific contexts, or "language games," where the word is used, misused, corrected, modified, adapted, etc. When philosophers try to use these words in abstract from these contexts, they produce nonsense because their use of the word isn't conditioned by the same "rules" that affect the use of the words in ordinary language. Thus we are left with the question as to how are they sure they're using the word right, or at least how they would know if the word they are using actually describes what they claim it does. It has nothing to do with existentialism, because the question of the meaning of life is nonsense, as per above.


For instance, the critique that philosophy doesn't solve problems is contentious but supportable.

Philosophy doesn't solve any problems, let alone philosophical problems. Thousands of years of arguing amongst philosophers have not produced one single answer to anything whereas scientists are constantly solving problems.


Ultimately, it's based on induction and pragmatics. It doesn't prove philosophy can't solve problems. Philosophy believes it can for who knows what reasons. I presume language-theories are supposed to dismiss philosophical methodology. However, I don't see how that is particularly significant.

Well, then that means it doesn't prove philosophers CAN solve problems also. The theories philosophers have are based on misuse and misunderstanding of how words and language are used, thus their entire theories are based on nothing but meaningless wordplay. This is like a person believing in a god or gods who make nature obey their laws because they confuse "laws of nature" with secular laws (tax laws, property laws, labor laws, etc.). I know I use that example a lot, but it works well to show how philosophy happens. Another similar example would be something like wonder what constitutes life in general when hearing about biologists asking what constitutes life - ignorant of the fact that the biologists are talking about life in terms of biology (e.g. something like any organism that can take in energy and reproduce, or something to that effect. I don't recall exactly to be honest). Or, hearing a statistician say "the average American family has 2.5 children" and wondering how anyone can have half a kid.


I find science interesting, but I just don't like the whole idea of science as having a monopoly on truth. As long as I accept that something is "scientifically true," I should still be able to believe it's false at a higher level. I like to avoid allowing systems to dictate my beliefs even when they create beliefs that aren't advantageous. I'd argue that much of science gives you reason to be completely pessimistic about the future and the capability of humanity. However, a combination of science and ethics works in unique ways.

Scientists don't have a monopoly on truth. If they did, there wouldn't be competing theories to explain the same phenomenon, theories being thrown out because of them being wrong, etc. Nothing is "scientifically true;" that seems to be another way of saying "scientific proof," which is a nonsense term when discussing science. Scientists don't believe they PROVE anything.


I just want to be able to control my state of mind as much as possible. I want to believe I am watching a film where real people die then stop when it finishes. If someone tells me it's false, I want to be able to honestly disagree with them.

...

Science limits the effectiveness of the imagination in legitimizing alternative realities. If I read a book, I want the characters to be real. Not metaphorically. Literally.



Why wouldn't you be able to? You can believe whatever you want. There's a difference between fantasy and reality in films and if someone is watching a documentary like The Last Road to Hell, and he tells you it's fake, then he's obviously wrong. Dead fucking wrong.

[JazzRemington]

I fear, JazzRemington, that I will never be able to communicate these ideas to you.

Oh well.

Life goes on.

Then there's probably nothing to say about them.

[The New Consciousness]

The impersonal awareness? You've just made that up!

On the contrary how could it be anything but impersonal? You assume that your awareness belongs to someone. But awareness doesn't have that quality. Can you ascribe any such qualities to awareness?

Now my point is that the whole person, this someone, this individual identity, 'sense of self' is experienced in awareness. I can experience myself, you can experience yourself. The individual ego, with all it's idiosyncracies and traits (the inheritance of conditioning), if you will, is seen, witnessed, observed, experienced. How can that be you then? Is that not an epiphenomenon of what you really are, simple awareness?

[Hit The North]

The impersonal awareness? You've just made that up!

On the contrary how could it be anything but impersonal? You assume that your awareness belongs to someone. But awareness doesn't have that quality. Can you ascribe any such qualities to awareness?


Of course, my awareness belongs to someone: Me! That's why I call it 'my awareness,' silly!

You're abstracting from the person again and, in true idealistic tradition, you confuse what is caused with what causes. It makes no sense to talk about 'awareness' as something which exists separately from the entity which is aware. You more or less say the same in your second paragraph!

My suspicion is that you are just trying to smuggle God into your representations of reality but hope to distract attention from this by calling it something else: 'impersonal awareness'. I have to tell you that it is not a very good disguise.

[The New Consciousness]

Of course, my awareness belongs to someone: Me! That's why I call it 'my awareness,' silly!

Can you manipulate it? Are you able to magically turn it off and on at will. No. It's there whether little, limited 'you' like it or not. It illuminates all your experience and it certainly doesn't depend on you. It is impersonal and you are the person that is illuminated by it. It is not God, that is another childish assumption. It is simply awareness. It cannot be perceived for it is the perceiver. It cannot be labelled, described, experienced. But it is fact. Without it there would be nothing.

You're abstracting from the person again

The person is an abstraction. It is the product of a lazy mind that assumes without properly going into things. Where is this 'person' in this exact, precise moment? Right now, try and find 'a person'. You cannot. There is just awareness of what is going on. The person arises as a construct in thought. Only a fool would deny such a thing.

and, in true idealistic tradition, you confuse what is caused with what causes.

I never said anything about causation. The only causation I have referred to is the undeniable fact of material dialectics.

I never said that awareness causes anything. Awareness perceives, I'm not claiming, like these crazy quantum-quacks, that awareness creates things. I do not argue for a God or cosmic power and I don't believe in free will. How could I be an idealist then?

It makes no sense to talk about 'awareness' as something which exists separately from the entity which is aware. You more or less say the same in your second paragraph!

'The entity which is aware' is an assumption derived from thought which arises in awareness. If we are going to be truly objective all we can say is: 'there is awareness here'. Don't you see that by saying 'this is my awareness' or 'there is a person being aware', you are just making half-baked unchallenged assumptions?

Be more rigorous in your inquiries. Or don't. I really don't care.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Things have meaning IN life, so the real question would be something like "what is the meaning in life of life," which is a recursive question and thus nonsense.

It's been a year since I did anything with recursion, but I'm not clear how it presumes a problem. If answers to questions are defined relatively, it can make sense. Recursion seems somewhat like circularity, but circularity is defensible in certain scenarios.

I think we are somewhat agreeing. However, I'd be interested on how you're defining meaning and life. To be fair, I know every little about meaning of life issues. I try to find my own individual meaning and leave it at that.


Trying to use a word in abstract from any particular use automatically renders it meaningless. Words get their meaning through use in specific contexts, or "language games," where the word is used, misused, corrected, modified, adapted, etc.

The best philosophers make honest attempts to turn abstract terms into clearly defined ones. Of course, this is often difficult. As our language evolved (if it did, I know little linguistics), we didn't have all our words. People saw complicated things like emotions, causation or how their environment reflects that food or danger is nearby.

It seems that it would be a difficult task to establish a language. If I was thrown on an island with people who all spoke different languages, I think it would take substantial effort to succeed in communicating complicated notions. And that's with the advantage of modern education and culture.

I think when people are asking about something, it's often something they observe. "Morality" might be an example. Most moral theorists disagree on what morality is because they communicate poorly. Morality is a word. Some people describe it as an emotion. Others something else. These people are typically describing different but real things.

Relativist Morality: How our cultures can cause us to believe certain things are immoral. This exists, but many people aren't talking about that.
Subjective Morality: How we feel about something. This exist, but morality isn't talking about that.
Amoralism: Morality doesn't exist. This is one of the better oppositions because it actually realizes what the topic is about.
Emotivism: Morality is our emotions. Morality isn't talking about that. The relation between emotions and morality is real, but it isn't morality.
Biological View: This is real. It's not morality.

Morality is a crazy and difficult notion dealing with logical justifications and a sort of perfect reasoning. Calling something else "morality" is a mistake because these things are already real and called something else. They can influence a view of morality, but they aren't the actual view. Perhaps a supervenience relation.

So once you specific your definition in philosophy, things are far more promising. You just start with axioms based on reason, pragmatics and/or self-evidence.


Philosophy doesn't solve any problems, let alone philosophical problems. Thousands of years of arguing amongst philosophers have not produced one single answer to anything whereas scientists are constantly solving problems.


Scientists are constantly solving problems because they agree what satisfies the conditions for "solving problems." If I had a theory where truth is getting 12% of people who wear hats to believe you, I could get a lot of truths. I'm not aware of the underlying justification for claiming scientists solve problems. I'd give them pragmatics, but I don't think this works because scientists usually reject pragmatic based conceptions of truth.

What is the underlying support for the claim that science solves problems - and how does this support cohere with scientific methodologies? I think science solves problems, obviously, I just don't see how scientists can think that.

I think philosophers solve problems all the time if you adopt a more flexible notion of truth. Arguably logic solves some problems mathematically.


Well, then that means it doesn't prove philosophers CAN solve problems also. The theories philosophers have are based on misuse and misunderstanding of how words and language are used, thus their entire theories are based on nothing but meaningless wordplay. Or, hearing a statistician say "the average American family has 2.5 children" and wondering how anyone can have half a kid.

Those mistakes happen all the time in philosophy and everyday conversation. However, what if things are understood properly? How is it fundamental that the philosopher fails?


Scientists don't have a monopoly on truth. If they did, there wouldn't be competing theories to explain the same phenomenon, theories being thrown out because of them being wrong, etc. Nothing is "scientifically true;" that seems to be another way of saying "scientific proof," which is a nonsense term when discussing science. Scientists don't believe they PROVE anything.

Scientists generally believe science is the only way to discover truths about the world. Of course, I include mathematics and observation as fundamental to science, here.

**

On a side note, what is the big argument going on in this thread? I can't make any sense of what the topic is.

[JazzRemington]

I think we are somewhat agreeing. However, I'd be interested on how you're defining meaning and life. To be fair, I know every little about meaning of life issues. I try to find my own individual meaning and leave it at that.

As I've said, "what is the meaning of life" is a nonsense question. So, I don't really think much about it, if at all. But, if you by "meaning" you mean "definition" (i.e. "what is the meaning of this word", or "what is the definition of this word"), then this is answerable question - you'd just ask a biologist or something. When people do philosophy when asking "what is the meaning of life," they seem to envision something queer or magical, it seems.


The best philosophers make honest attempts to turn abstract terms into clearly defined ones. Of course, this is often difficult. As our language evolved (if it did, I know little linguistics), we didn't have all our words. People saw complicated things like emotions, causation or how their environment reflects that food or danger is nearby.

The words in language evolved through social interaction between people. It's a way of communicating with others. Philosophical discussions are predicated on ignoring this fact and this is why they will never solve their problems. It's not about defining words (words don't give meaning to words), but seeing how they are actually used in ordinary language. Actual use (how they are used, in what context, what actions are associated with the word, etc.) is what gives words meaning.


It seems that it would be a difficult task to establish a language. If I was thrown on an island with people who all spoke different languages, I think it would take substantial effort to succeed in communicating complicated notions. And that's with the advantage of modern education and culture.

You could understand them, but you'd have to live in their culture before you can grasp the meaning fo the words they use. If you try to use words in the way they are used in your native language, you'd produce nonsense when trying to converse with these other people. The way you are using them makes no sense in their language. Philosophy doesn't make its own language: it destroys and subverts language in the mistaken belief that it is the key to understanding the fundamental structures of reality and the world, whatever that is.


I think when people are asking about something, it's often something they observe. "Morality" might be an example. Most moral theorists disagree on what morality is because they communicate poorly. Morality is a word. Some people describe it as an emotion. Others something else. These people are typically describing different but real things.

Well, philosophy can't solve moral or ethical problems. That's why they're called "ethical problems," and not "philosophical problems." The real goal of philosophy here would be to sort out the different uses of "good," "right," "evil," etc. and provide clear understanding of what these terms mean - what people mean when they say something is "good," for instance. People solve ethical problems, not philosophers.


Scientists are constantly solving problems because they agree what satisfies the conditions for "solving problems." If I had a theory where truth is getting 12% of people who wear hats to believe you, I could get a lot of truths. I'm not aware of the underlying justification for claiming scientists solve problems. I'd give them pragmatics, but I don't think this works because scientists usually reject pragmatic based conceptions of truth.

Well, sometimes they don't even agree with what constitutes a success. Science isn't monolithic, it often comes down to competing theories that are more or less just as good as the last with the one theory becoming dominant because it has the least flaws.


What is the underlying support for the claim that science solves problems - and how does this support cohere with scientific methodologies? I think science solves problems, obviously, I just don't see how scientists can think that.

Well, disease is sort of a major problem.


I think philosophers solve problems all the time if you adopt a more flexible notion of truth. Arguably logic solves some problems mathematically.

None of their supposed answers has any effect on anything but philosophy.




That's more of a lack of understanding what a word or a phrase means, which can be clarified by asking someone who does know. You cannot do that with philosophy because philosophers try to use words in the abstract and apply their own personal definitions to them, which means they cannot be sure they are using them right. Remember that we learn to use language through social interactions, it's something that's shared between people. When a word is misused in ordinary language, we can correct this misunderstanding easily. It's not so much that a person does SAYS this word means this or that, but that the meaning of the word in question "evolved" through usage, so the person who is clarifying the word is just saying how the word is already being used - what it already means.

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[quote]On a side note, what is the big argument going on in this thread? I can't make any sense of what the topic is.

Exactly.

[Hit The North]

On a side note, what is the big argument going on in this thread? I can't make any sense of what the topic is.

Unsurprising, given that The New Consciousness has trolled this thread with his mystical gibberish.

[The New Consciousness]

'mystical gibberish'

Lovely phrase.

You're quite right though. It is all gibberish. It's a load of meaningless crap, every single word of it. About as meaningful as a squawking parrot.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

'mystical gibberish'

Lovely phrase.

You're quite right though. It is all gibberish. It's a load of meaningless crap, every single word of it. About as meaningful as a squawking parrot.

Then kindly stop wasting everyone's time and go away, please?