Originally posted by
[email protected] 10 2005, 04:35 AM
only truly moral ideas will motivate 100% of the individual, and if this isnt 100% i dont know what is.
I have not yet heard an explanation of 'morality' that actually points to anything that exists. Would you be willing to elaborate on what you mean here?
a 'moral idea' in this context is an ideal, so thoroughly beleived in, by all parts of the consciousness that the individual is willing to sacrifice their personal existence for it - not *might* sacrifice, like a soldier, but *will*. As (i think) marx, or mao, argued, the revolutionary soldier will win over the bourguoie soldier because the morality, the 'rightness' of the struggle will empower him/her more.
Someone said that the monk, through meditation, had achieved the highest form of rational thought. Now, I might be willing to accept that meditation can aid in rational thought. This does not mean, however, that having succesfully meditated necesitates having succesfully thought rationally.
actually by definition it does. perhaps you mean that there is a difference between rational acts, and acts based upon reality - if you have been brainwashed to beleive that bush is fighting a real war on terror, and that his is the only hands to entrust this to, then your rational act is to vote for him. That such a beleif has very little reality outside of fox news does not detract from the rationality of your act.
I don't understand your point here...
Either you are saying that meditation is a rational action, or a means to more rational belief...
By your definition of a rational action, I do not see how there can be an irrational action. Surely everyone at the very least works on the premise that what they are currently doing is rational, which would seem to imply under your model that since we believe our current actions to be rational, and we believe that something being rational is good grounds for action, that all action is always rational.
If you are saying that it is a means to more rataional belief, then I might see how this can be the case, though I still don't see how it is necesitated that an engagement with the method will get you the intended result (as a method is just a recreation of causal factors that can themselves be negated by other causal factors that are currently beyond our control).
i am saying that meditation is a means to a more rational beleif - and is therefore also a rational act.
i do not divide the world into aritotalean two state logic, ie rational v irrational, i see it as an analogue state of greater or lesser rationality, depending on the numbers of factors understood and acted upon.
yes, i think *all* acts are inevitably rational, even though in some extreme cases the individual is confused themselves over why they acted. BTW, this philosophical beleif of mine allows the free will v determinsm paradox to be resolved - all acts being rational, when we look back at apst acts we can see the rational cause/effect that led to them, yet when we look to the future all possibilites are open. (just an aside for your commenting).
as for the possibility that the greater potential rationality of our acts through meditation can be negated by other factors, i reply "naturally". This is equally true of *every* act we take that could potentially increase our rationality, including education, and the application of the scientific method. The key point is, is that the trend is towards greater rationality, and the conglomerate of rational act improvements will lead the conglomerate of mankind forward - exactly like scince works.
Take the foundational beliefs of the Monk that he would go on to live in another life after this one. Does the monk have any rational reason to believe this?
yes, very much so. more in fact than the opposite concept of absolute death - however to understand this fully requires certain mental states to be experienced, much like the experience of colour can only be explained to a person who has had vision.
More so than the concept of absolute death? I didn't realise rational belief can come in degrees. If we are only making conjecture, then a greater amount of evidence for one conjecture does not constitute proof of it over the other conjectures.
In other words, whilst there might be evidence to go for either of the conjectures here, there is proof that we can only say that we do not know.
oh contraire, it is an accepted maxim in QM that all states are in probability - some states are more probable than others.
a case in point, i regard it as moderate to high probability that kennedy was assassinated by more than the one guy, however more information upon this topic could shift this probability one way or the other. To decide to *beleive* that he was or was not assassinated by more than one person, is the basis for paranoia. A paranoic beleives absolutely in something for whcih they have less than total information for... as total information is impossible, (as david hume as shown, even your own existence), thus the QM maxim of probability is also the basis for mental health.
Yet, I do accept it as plausible that the monk has had access to some experience which gave him direct access to knowledge beyond my own as concerns the issue of whether there is eternal life.
However, unless the monk, or someone else, can direct me in recreating these experiences for myself, then it is useless for the monk or you to tell me of the experiences or the derivations made from them.
If I was blind and someone described colour to me I would tell them to stop wasting their time until they can find a way for me to experience it.
in the same fashoin that a physicist, or biochemist, can understand and try to explain concepts that really require years of hard study and concentration, so too the states that the monk has achieved are available to anyone wishing to focus their mind to that level, on those expereinces, using the same techniques as he did.
and, i might add, a gymnast, or a 'political/social animal' - experiences gained by long study are not limited to the intellectual.
it is possible the concept of 'freedom' is an a priori knowledge built into life - i am not aware of a single creature that cannot understand (at the least) environmental freedom.
We have the 'freedom' to do things. The extent of our freedom is limited by the extent to which we can affect change within our perceptual world.
indeed - but that might not be the limit of our conceptual framework of freedom.
In the quote from me I cover environmental freedom as being the only coherent concept that can be drawn from the general conceptual framework of freedom.
Yes, we have concepts of freedom that go beyond that which we can find in the world. We also have concepts of animals that go beyond that which we can find in the world. This lends nothing significant to the concept of a Unicorn, and equally there is nothing significant to those concepts of freedom that go beyond our capability to shape our environs.
i'm sorry, i have been hit with the 'stupid carrot' tonight. I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
The only thing this Monk achieved was to end his own life, and any and all of the consequences that this brings with it.
yet his act has caused the current discussion, which may open new avenues of thought for some people (it has for me, for instance).
The current discussion is occuring outisde of his perceptual reality and is therefore of no consequence to his beliefs or actions.
i feel i should point out that the second statement is as absolutely true for EVERY act EVER made
Which is why I went on to detail the way in which I believe we can talk about those consequences.
OK
If the monk truly was as highly rational as you claim he was then he should have realised that having no basis on which to hypothesise what would occur after death, that a simple end would be as likely as anything else,
not in his paradigm, to him life IS eternal, never mind the fleeting thoughts and desires that we in the west call our 'personalities'. Although this may seem to you to be a non-material phantasy, it is as real to him as a space shuttle is to you, which is indeed as phantastical to an illiterate native of outer borneo as reincarnation is to you.
As I said earlier, if he has truly had an experience that informs his view of death beyond mine then it is almost certainly one which can be replicated. Pending my knowledge of how to carry out this replication I have to work on the basis that there is no such experience, as it would contradict a number of other experiences I have.
you have direct experinces of death? the experiences he had (and i have had similar), you can gain by following what he achieved in his life - ie dedicated meditation, and perhaps through use of koans a resolutin of apparent contradictions. Another method, far far quicker but not necessarily as 'solid', is to use the methods outlined in timothy leary's translation and adapatation of the 'tibetan book of the dead', also called 'bardo thodol'.
Also, you seem to be acting on the beliefs that I assert that reincarnation is not the case and that I have no understanding of Eastern Philosophies.
Anyway. Whilst reincarnation is, in your words, 'phantastical' to me, and space shuttles are phantastical to the natives of outer borneo, Unicorns, God's and the suggestions of self-contradicting philosophies all also seem phantastical to me. And are all equivalent in their phantasy for me, as space shuttles are to the inhabitants of outer borneo. For some things, they will share their phantastical understanding of the concept, such as with Unicorns.
Here you have drawn a comparison between a concept which has an existence i have experienced and can point to, but which for someone else they cannot. You have then made the interesting suggestion that I should infer from this that there is grounds for believing the monk.
The fact is that I accept and have never denied that the monk may have access to some greater knowledge and experience than mine, but unless this knowledge and experience can be demonstrated to me then I simply do not have the ability to act on the conjecture, as there are infinite other conjectures all equally plausible that I would then have to divide my time between.
not necassarily - we all have to choose somewhat between what is indeed an infinity of possible conjectures, but what is truly required is not necessarily beleif - but simple openmindedness. Perhaps this monk was or was not wrong - we can really only 'judge' him on two counts, that is *his*, and that requires some understanding of his reality tunnel and beleif structure, or *ours*, and that requires only that we close our minds to the possibilities implicit in realities other than ours.
personally, i usually prefer to take the openminded route, i have found my own beleif strucutres too limited too many times in the past to imagine i hold all the answers now, and it is also of greater scientific, and humanistic approach to life.
as is any number of different afterlives which reward any number of different lifetime activities. There is no way that we can act in reaction to what is to occur in the afterlife, as we simply cannot know.
that is your paradigm. His training had enabled his reality to percieve and include the probability of the existence of 'space shuttles', so to speak.
I include the possibility of 'space shuttles', what is disputed is whether one can know about 'space shuttles'. Once we have proven the existence of 'space shuttles' we then still have the problem of proving their nature. A small variance in the features of the 'space shuttles' can have massive implications for the way they operate, and they way we therefore operate in reaction to them.
i think i agree...
and a mother or father who sacrifices their lives to save their child is an irrational person?
Yes.
There are chemicals that have been identified as being responsible for this lack of rationality in parents
no. they are rational, however their behaviour is rational with the beleif (or comprehension, whatever) that the child is part of their 'selfdom', the child is their hope for immortality.
BTW it has been shown that thoughts create chemicals, and chemicals thoughts - it is our language that attempts to decide which 'causes' which.
mammals have maternal/paternal feelings, and overridable instincts - naturally, there are some chemicals that mammals therefore have that ie crocodiles dont.
isolating such chemicals no more 'proves' that these chemicals 'cause' such behaviour, as that mammals 'desiring' to protect their young has 'caused' these chemicals to become stronger - no more, and no less.
Once the monk was dead he had no guarantor that he would be able to perceive what effect his actions would have in the world.
irrelevant. he knew the morality of his acts, thus his act increased the sum total of morality in the universe. As he saw it.
Again, I see no such thing as 'morality'.
very well.
what if morality was definied as 'that type of behaviour that supports the expansion and flourishment of life in the multitude of environs it finds itself.'?
There is, however, a multitude of other actions which he could have carried out with a much greater chance of success, within life.
apparently he disagreed with you.
If he was still alive I would have been able to demonstrate it for him, unless he could then demonstrate the way in which my demonstration is irrelevant or incorrect then he would be truly irrational to continue disagreeing with me.
The fact is that as far as I am aware the human beings I have come into contact with would be capable of realising 'a multitude of other actions which he could have carried out with a much greater chance of success, within life'.
equally, he could have tried one of your techniques, such as (perhaps) shooting dead o couple of soldiery, and then been shot himself - in his world view, little would have changed, except he would then have a MASSIVE karmic debt to pay back.
coercion is not part of the buddhist way, his act enabled millions aorund the world to recognise the value of his sacrifice, and to voluntarily change their way of thought, and act. With this beleif system, what greater could he have achieved than by his act of public self immolation?
an involuntary act has little karmic consequence - death is not an issue for him, much as sleep is not for you, it is how he lived his life, and chose to end it - his *choices* if you will, that determines the value of his life. This he understood.
if it is acts within our life that have karmic consequence when moving from this life, then he could have stayed alive and developed his karma for longer before moving on. What is more, if it is the act and the morality of the act that are of karmic consequence then he could have done a plethora of other things to protest that didnt result in his death that would have had equivalent karma. Or is karma determined by some absolute measurable consequence?
but he doesnt beleive he has 'died' - not in the sense commonly understood. The consequences of his act are that many millions of people around the world became aware, for a greater or lesser time, of a universe different from their everyday one, a univberse where this man was willing to cause and suffer incredible pain to himself to bring this world to them, a world where freedom of spiritual endevour was worth more to him than what they consider the most vital 'thing' they own - life itself.
and he also probably didnt beleive he would achieve buddhahood through this act, but that he *would* return and continue to develop his karma, and work for the liberation of everyone on this fucked up planet.
I admire that he had the ability to do what he did, but I do not admire either his motivation (which is simply confusion) or the fact that he actually did it.
although he did not do it for admiration, i suspect he would feel it was positive that you are aware there are some things worth paying such a heavy price for.
At no point did i concede that there is any thing i am aware of worth paying for with death.
ah, my misunderstanding and apologies.
perhaps one day you will - but not necessarily to 'achieve' it personally.
Because a slave was never freed by setting himself on fire!
have you never heard the saying "death is preferable to slavery"? there are few greater expressions of freedom than voluntary immolation to escape from intolerable repression.
How is death preferable to slavery? If anything suicide during slavery would be an expression of the intolerable repression you seek to escape.
As a slave you have become objectified, you are a machine for fulfilling certain roles, you become narrowed down to little more than an economic unit. By dying you do not change this, you are just broken machinery, and they'll just get a replacement.
from the point of view of economics, perhaps. from teh point of view of the enslaved individual, that particular suffering is now over.
if you were in an intolerable position, from which there is so little chance of escape that even dreaming of it can only cause you pain and suffering, for example terminal cancer, would you not consider ending it voluntarily before its natural, gruesome and exatrordinarliy painful end?
personally, i would.