What are absolutes?

Real Life, your last sentence is both true and false. Knowing ABOUT non-dualism in a purely abstract way is not quite the same as experiencing (and thinking*) non-dualistically. Fresco and I have argued around this point with our esteemed colleague, JoefromChicago, to the point of exhaustion.

*(this is rare since most language-based thinking is inherently dualistic)

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PQ,

I would be very much surprised if there is any base-level wiring difference between the brains of absolutists and non-absolutists. I would agree with JLN that absolutism and non-absolutism are "mental postures." I suppose that, over the years, these two postures, if they are used continuously and intensively, may evolve some distinctive neurological changes at the molecular level. An imponderable for now!

My guess is that non-absolutism in the general population may be a function of time. I have long noticed that friends and students and other acquaintances trend in that direction as they grow older. I would tend to argue, along JLN's track, that, the greater the variety of sensation a person has experienced, the more likely he/she will shift posture towards non-absolutism.

I agree completely with JLN on the pleasure bonus of the non-absolutist posture: a person with this POV can see (and enjoy) a greater variety of texture in life.

I imagine an absolutist's studying a painting, and I wince. That POV, to my mind, tends to limit the perception and enjoyment of any art.

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real life wrote:

The Pentacle Queen wrote:
JL, i like your opinions.
It appears there are people who do not need the idea of absolutes in order to understand the world. Maybe this is laterally a step in the right direction, or maybe a resistance against general human perception which contains no actual truth.

Without wanting to sound elitist, because that is no way my intention, do you think that certain brains are more developed so as to be able to understand the world in it's 'grey tones' rather than the simplistic 'black and white' that dualism provides?
What do you think is the value the understanding of the world we have? And would it be beneficial if more people thought in this sense?

hi PQ,

There are others who do indeed understand why you may reject absolutes, but disagree with this POV because it is inherently contradictory.

It does sound elitist if you think that the only reason someone wouldn't agree with your POV is that they do not (or can not) understand it.

Real life, you are right. It would be elitist of me to suggest that the reason why someone would not agree with me is because they do not understand.
I am by no means suggesting their is a link between my sort of opinion and intelligence or anything of the sort, lets forget that idea.
Humans have a habit of creating ideas which therefore become norms, which we then 'step inside' and take as truth.
As someone said, language is mainly dualistic. 'Good' and 'Bad.'
According to Orwell in 1984 the opposite of 'Good' should be 'ungood' which takes a more negative stance, than the label of 'Bad,' which is often understood as another concept. Is bad really the lack of good? Or is the lack of good neutralness? Or ungood?

Like JL says, there is a lot of pleasure to be found in non-absolutism. My non-absolutism and subjectivism has helped me understand many a social situation, many an idea, concept or artwork to a different level than how I perceived them when I was a few years younger, and did not think in this way.
Certainly this can be seen as a difference.
Maybe my non-absolutism is a result of my brains lack of ability to cope with undefinable concepts.
I think these concepts should be used as tools, rather than treated objectively.

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Miklos, a good choice of word: "texture". We might also include "flavor". That is what I was referring to when I paraphrased Socrates--the unlived life is not worth examining.
The aesthetic success of a painting rests to a large extent on "relativism" (as opposed to absolutism). Every shape, color, etc. takes its value from its relationships with other elements of the picture. One can also see how this applies to non-dualism as a quality of immediate and sensual perception. The painters' persistent concern is to maintain both a quality of harmony and UNITY in their creations, but ironically there is also a concern to exploit the aesthetic interest inherent in (dualistic) contrasts: dark-light, cold-warm colors, smooth-rough textures, hard-soft edges, fast-slow lines, etc. etc. But the contrast sets enumerated are perceived as aesthetic unities. They are only talked and thought about as dualities.

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JLNobody wrote:

Real Life, your last sentence is both true and false. Knowing ABOUT non-dualism in a purely abstract way is not quite the same as experiencing (and thinking*) non-dualistically. Fresco and I have argued around this point with our esteemed colleague, JoefromChicago, to the point of exhaustion.

*(this is rare since most language-based thinking is inherently dualistic)

Hmm.. Is it so rare?
How do we experience a piece of music?
We should not confuse the experience of hearing a piece of music with the experience of "mentally processing" it.

To make it simple, I'd like to use the example of the rythm of drums. When we break it down we understand it as intervals of sound and silence. There is the beating of the drums, but each sound is separated from the next by a measured strech of silence.
And there can be no understanding of rythm save the non-dualistic perception of it. The sound, without the silence, is meaningless to us. It wouldn't be rythm. Similarly, of course, the silence is equally meaningless in this context.

My point is that dualistic understanding cannot come if there is no non-dualistic perception of whatever we are examining with our reason.
Holistic perception precedes dualistic understanding.
But the non-dualistic perception is instinctive. It is the eye that percieves as well as the object of it's perception, so it is so easily neglected as an important aspect of the process that constitutes sentience.

So I'd like to make the bold claim that non-dualistic perception and thinking isn't rare at all. In fact, it is so common that it goes unnoticed by us...

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Cryacuz, I agree. Let me make the following qualification of my statement: Perception in the sense of immediate sensation is inherently non-dualistic and we have that all the time. Our THINKING about our perceptions--models, categories, classes, definitions, abstract structures, etc.--are inherently or at least primarily dualistic at the level of thought. If we observe our thought processes as sensation (as is done in zen meditation) we see, then, that they are inherently pre-reflective or non-dualistic. So what I am doing right now is both pre-reflectively non-dualistic and reflective (or post reflective)/dualistic.
I agree that hearing music is the best example of non-dualistic experience, and I would add that completely non-representational abstract art has the same character (viz., visual music). the difference is between the immediacy of non-meaningful (zen-emptiness) and the intermediacy of meaningful (thoughtful) experience.*

*"Experience" is a problematical term: Neitzsche thinks that sensation is not experience until we use it cognitively, until we organize it cognitively, or "make sense" of it (in this instance an ironical phrase).

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Cryacuz, I agree. Let me make the following qualification of my statement: Perception in the sense of immediate sensation is inherently non-dualistic and we have that all the time. Our THINKING about our perceptions--models, categories, classes, definitions, abstract structures, etc.--are inherently or at least primarily dualistic at the level of thought. If we observe our thought processes as sensation (as is done in zen meditation) we see, then, that they are inherently pre-reflective or non-dualistic. So what I am doing right now is both pre-reflectively non-dualistic and reflective (or post reflective)/dualistic.
I agree that hearing music is the best example of non-dualistic experience, and I would add that completely non-representational abstract art has the same character (viz., visual music). the difference is between the immediacy of non-meaningful (zen-emptiness) and the intermediacy of meaningful (thoughtful) experience.*

*"Experience" is a problematical term: Neitzsche thinks that sensation is not experience until we use it cognitively, until we organize it cognitively, or "make sense" of it (in this instance an ironical phrase).

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the above is not what I mean by dualism. Laughing

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Why not?
It is such a prime example of the "non-dualism of dualism". Laughing

Are we making a circle with our words?

Another giveaway, this time, about how "the fractured reality of components" is a thing of our minds.

Every dualistic notion suggests it's counterpart. If we are unable to sense or reflect on this counterpart, the response is that we don't understand or that we do not agree. In our dualistic mindset, the dualistic counterpart of whatever we are observing is often thought of as the explanation.

It is in how we give meaning to the term "light", for instance.

And I do not know if I agree with Nietzche.
The ability for cognitive activity can be thought of as a result of experience. If this weren't so, how can creatures and objects that possess very little or no cognitive abilities interact with the world?
What comes before the ability of self awareness? Before the ability to devise terms such as cognitive activity and so on?
The brain comes before. And before that the lung, giving the brain the oxygen it needs to live and evolve.
So in the murky waters of pre-historic earth, there was a creature that crawled out of the oceans. It didn't possess the ability to ponder this action. It did it, as a reaction to the world around it. And so it went right up until the day some creature suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, attained the awareness of it's impact and it's influence on it's surroundings, giving birth to the concept of self.
I am suggesting that experience isn't about the cognitive, it is not about what we think about the events we endure. It is the enduring of these events, mind or no mind. I suggest it because the power to think presented itself to us after a long development. After enduring a number of things that provoked this faculty of our minds.

Lastly, I think that the beginning of self awareness wasn't so much a matter of physical evolution as it was a matter of inventing new terms. But that discussion perhaps does not belong here...

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JLNobody wrote:

the above is not what I mean by dualism.

Is non-dualism only what you say it is?

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RL, what a strange comment.

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Actually it was a question.

Care to answer?

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A very thoughtful contribution, Cryacuz. I think sometimes that knowledge is like an aesthetic process. We intuit things, positively producing images about ourselves and the world--as opposed to the process of applying mathematics and logic. The latter, especially logic, are not positive (and they are very new in our evolutionary career); they serve the negative function of keeping us from contradicting ourselves---I guess.

RL "the above is not what I mean by dualism" was intended as humor, referring to the repetition of my post. Reduncancy is not dualism.

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A very thoughtful contribution, Cryacuz. I think sometimes that knowledge is like an aesthetic process. We intuit things, positively producing images about ourselves and the world--as opposed to the process of applying mathematics and logic. The latter, especially logic, are not positive (and they are very new in our evolutionary career); they serve the negative function of keeping us from contradicting ourselves---I guess.

RL "the above is not what I mean by dualism" was intended as humor, referring to the repetition of my post. Redundancy is not dualism.

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There are absolutes and they exist in the physical world in abundance.

The "breaking strength" of a given piece of aluminum under a given set of conditions is an absolute beyond which the aluminum will break.

To be more explicit

Quote:

The tensile strength of a material is the maximum amount of tensile stress that it can be subjected to before failure. The definition of failure can vary according to material type and design methodology. This is an important concept in engineering, especially in the fields of material science, mechanical engineering and structural engineering.

There are three typical definitions of tensile strength:

Yield strength
The stress at which material strain changes from elastic deformation to plastic deformation, causing it to deform permanently.

Ultimate strength
The maximum stress a material can withstand.

Breaking strength
The stress coordinate on the stress-strain curve at the point of rupture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_strength

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Sometimes people just can't get past their conflicts of definitions.

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Oh dear, you can't possibly mean open-minded me.

construct

1.To form by assembling or combining parts; build.
2. To create (an argument or a sentence, for example) by systematically arranging ideas or terms.
3.Mathematics. To draw (a geometric figure) that meets specific requirements.

1. Something formed or constructed from parts.

2. a) A concept, model, or schematic idea: a theoretical construct of the atom.
2. b) A concrete image or idea: "[He] began to shift focus from the haunted constructs of terror in his early work" (Stephen Koch).

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Chumly, I'm experiencing "spring fever" today, meaning extreme laziness. Therefore the brevity of my response to you reflected my lack of energy and motivation.
By differences in definition, regarding "absolute", I was implicitly comparing your emphasis on ultimates such as the "breaking strength"; by absolute I refer to an entity or state of things that stand by themselves without being conditioned by or relative to anything else. As I see it EVERYTHING is relative and conditioned...even the speed of light, i.e, that constant is determine by "everything else". Smile

What are absolutes?

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