Dasein: on being "thrown" into the world

Fresco, you ARE your "superficial" differences, since the autobiographical memories go into creating the sense of self. Without them, "you" wouldn't exist and you would have nothing more than core consciousness, aware but unable to use the body of knowledge accumulated over your lifetime to process information.

In that sense, you would be twyvel's unobserved observer, but you would be an automaton since you would have no basis on which to interpret what you observed and no volition with which to act on it. Everything would be done by instinct alone. Yes, you would be free of cultural influences and biases, but instinctual behavior is not considered to be "free will."

What is the point of discarding the advanced state of consciousness that took evolution millions of years to achieve? You can recognize and drop your cultural biases without losing your mind in the process.

Terry,

The degree of "advancement" of consciousness is a debateable issue.

Some of the literature distinguishes between "self" and "Self", the first being ephemeral with the illusion of being in control, the second being transcendent the with "the abilty to do." Twyvel's position tends to go further and transcend "time" in which action, mind, subjectivity and objectivity become irrelevent categories. However, in as much as I agree to communicate at all, I cannot here take this further step, although I understand it by induction from the "self to Self" step.

I agree that much of this seems contrary to "common sense notions". But the question posed by such systems is of the form: "do your common sense notions of reality "work" for "you" or "the world"? If not, try observing "this", without pre-judgement. The experience of such observation often triggers a self perpetuating process of discovery....but then, some are "content" ...

Terry:

<<<Agreed that culture plays a role in how we interpret things such as whether bugs are icky or yummy, bathing is good for you, gods cause thunder, animals have souls, people should be obedient cogs in society or rugged individuals, disease can be cured by drugs or incantations, women are intelligent human beings with full rights or nothing but chattel.

But a lot of who we think we are is based on biology, not culture. The experience of motherhood, warfare, grammatical language, emotions, and sensory perceptions are common to people everywhere>>>

That's true. Biologically we overlap in many crucial respects. But what matters in the here and now is why we choose this particular word/behavior rather than that one....why we believe this about gender roles or abortion or artistic talent rather than something else. Biology is, by large, a framework, a scaffolding around which culture programs our actual existential choices.

The crucial factor, however, being that so much of this is profoundly problematic...situated...relative to culture and socialization. Whether we want to assign the explanation more to nature rather than nurture doesn't change the fact that either way there is no way for philosophy [using its chief tool, rational thought] to differentiate right from wrong, good from bad, authentic from inauthentic moral, politcal or aesthetic preferences.

<<<Suppose that you decide that everything you once believed is wrong and completely reassess and reconstruct your own reality. How do you know that the assumptions on which you based your new world-view get you any closer to Reality than your old ones? If their brand-new illusions make people happier, perhaps it is best not to examine them too closely>>>

My point, of course, is that, given the extent to which a "sense of self" is largely a prefabricated circumstantial contraption that ceaselessly evolves and changes over time [and then is obliterated forever at death] there is no way we can extract a more intellectually legitimate or reasonable or epistemologically sound sense of self out of it. The indoctrination runs too deep and is embedded not only in our mental constructs but in the very manner in which we appropiate and interact with the world around us emotionally and psychologically. This is what the father in The Emerald Forest came to understand. He could take his son back to New York and teach him a whole new set of behaviors. But on a much more visceral and intuitive level the son would always be "one of them" rather than "one of us".

And even if you were convinced that your "new self" was fully extracted from the old, indoctrinated one, there is no way to ascertain which set of behaviors is any more or less "progressive" or "real". Everything is is always relative to everything else. There are no objective or essential or universal standards of behavior. So the new "I" would just become the new prefabication.

RP

RP

Advocates of meditational practice might claim that the emergent "I" is distinguished from the "lesser I" by "the quality of experience". The claim is that relativity has been transcended and the ultimate position (selflessness) is the corollary of the aphorism "Where the self is, truth is not".

truth
I agree, Fresco. When observing something with a completely open consciosuness, without presumptions, one may become fascinated with its uniqueness (and we must remember that everything's unique, even pennys)--strange how similar, but not identical, this is to the pot experience. We thus free ourselves from seeing classes and categories which are inherently unreal (only useful). What we see in freedom (from abstractions) is profoundly real, and we may see that it IS us (Tat Tvam Asi).

But don't forget Terry, that they 'are' you (and your partner)!
as much as your arm, or leg, or head; but more.
And they will probably end up very similar; and in your case that is to their benefit, whereas in many cases, it can be very scarey!

If however, that child, or any of the aboriginal children, had access to an internet connection, there would be a vast difference to the final makeup of the resultant individual. We are the sum of all our sources of information; and we create a 'personna' reflecting the sum, however bizaar, of those influences.

Biology is the chrysalis of the human journey; we break out of it by an act of will, from the realisation of 'more'; or sometimes, rather than becomming 'butterflies', some of us opt to stagnate and remain forever 'bugs' wrapped in a comforting shell of ignorance!

The father could and should have interacted with his son to 'add' the potential from another set of social knowledge, allowing the son to build a new amalgum from both discarding what was 'unworthy' by his standards, and adding what was of apparent value.
Thus the family continuity would be able to benefit from the chance experience of bothe the father, and the son.